Green Betty

Betty's Bites

2011-12-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

So, dear readers, I've decided to branch out into culinary gifts and catering--just in time for the holiday season! Here's the skinny:

Betty's Bites: Culinary Gifts, Catering, and More!

Betty’s Bites offers culinary gift and catering services by A Taste of the Maritimes: Local Seasonal Recipes the Whole Year Round author Elisabeth Bailey. Your recipient will receive a festive card hand made by a local artist with the details of their gift, including scheduling and delivery information, as well as a suite of five bonus holiday recipes.

Dessert of the Month Club

Choose between the Local Fruit Club, with offerings such as raspberry Grand Marnier sorbet, strawberry lavender tea cakes, and Honeycrisp caramel pie; or the Simply Decadent Club, with selections including Laughing Whale espresso brownies, cinnamon ice cream balls enrobed in dark Fair Trade chocolate, and gingerbread pear trifle. Both options include the local fruit and Ironworks Distillery liqueur fruitcake featured in A Taste of the Maritimes for December. Each dessert includes 8-10 portions.

3 months $96 6 months $192 12 months $384

Condiment of the Month Club

Condiments include selections such as caramelized rhubarb jam, garlic scape pesto, ketchup, cranberry apple pickles, garlic chile sauce, and seafood herb rub.

3 months $58 6 months $116 12 months $232

Seasonal Produce Boxes

A choice selection representing the best of Nova Scotia farms and orchards delivered every week. Each produce box includes 10-12 servings and an assortment of recipes utilizing the fruits and vegetables for that week. A perfect choice for the health-conscious person who can’t regularly shop every table at the market!

6 weeks $128 12 weeks $256 24 weeks $512 48 weeks $1024

Personalized Cooking Classes

Learn to cook a delicious four-course meal of local, contemporary cuisine in your home with author Elisabeth Bailey. Custom menus available.

$120 for a 2 hour class for 2 people, including dinner. Add $35 for each additional person.

Catered Delivery

A delicious four-course meal of local, contemporary cuisine with the author of A Taste of the Maritimes! Custom menus available. Meals can be delivered fresh or frozen.

$30 per person; minimum of 2

To purchase any of the gifts and services listed above, or to discuss your own unique culinary gift idea, contact Elisabeth Bailey at (902) 634-8090 or uuelisabeth@yahoo.com. Delivery surcharges apply for locations more than 20 kilometres from Lunenburg.

Cranberry Apple Pickles

2011-11-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

This is a perfect side dish for the holidays--all three main ingredients (apples, cranberries, and lemon juice) have a detoxifying effect to combat your holiday indulgences, and the taste is a lovely complement to roast turkey and ham alike.

Cranberry Apple Pickles

Ingredients (per 500 mL jar)

1/2 cup lemon juice (substitute rhubarb juice for a completely local choice)
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons sugar or honey
2 teaspoons salt
2 large or 3 small-medium apples, any varietal
1/2 cup fresh whole cranberries

Directions

Combine lemon or rhubarb juice, water, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat.

While brine is heating, peel apples and slice into long strips or chunks, according to taste. Slice cranberries in half. Place half of cranberries at the bottom of jar, followed by a layer of apples, then topped with remaining cranberries.

Pour simmering brine over fruit mixture to a level 1/2 inch from the top of the jar. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then cover tightly, label, and store in the refrigerator.

This recipe will keep in the refrigerator for up to two months, so make it now, put it away, and forget it until Christmas! It even makes a lovely food gift for those of you who want to impress friends and family with your craftiness. They don't need to know how simple it was--I won't tell if you don't.

Watch the Author

2011-11-13T16:55:00.000-08:00

All the publicity work I'm doing for A Taste of the Maritimes is a blast! I'll be on CTV Morning Live this Tuesday, the 13th, at 8:15 AM, so don't forget to tune in. Until then you can satisfy yourself with my author video from the Nimbus East Coast Reads series.

Cookbook ahoy hoy

2011-11-06T04:43:00.001-08:00

The book is launched! Blogger doesn't like my fancy photographs, but you can sneak a peek at the photos from the launch here.

If you are new to this blog and have bought the book, please feel free to ask a question or leave a comment. I'm always happy to chat about local food, where to find it, and how to prepare it. Welcome!

Spicy Pickled Lemon Carrots

2011-11-03T17:32:00.001-07:00

I have never been a pickle person. As much as I love vegetables and appreciate the concept of pickling, a hint of vinegar is always plenty for me!

One day, however, it occurred to me that if I could substitute lemon juice for vinegar in other recipes… why couldn’t I just do so for pickles? The resulting recipe is my first foray into vinegar-free pickles. It is, simply put, delicious beyond measure.

Spicy Pickled Lemon Carrots

I make these as refrigerator pickles, so jar sterilization and processing isn’t necessary. If you prefer to prepare these for the shelf, however, use sterilized jars and canning lids and process in a boiling water bath for fifteen minutes after sealing the lid.

Ingredients

In each 500 ml jar:

* 3-4 large carrots or 7-10 small carrots, peeled and cut into sticks or rounds
* 2-3 garlic cloves
* 1 large or two small fresh red jalapenos
* 4-5 whole peppercorns
* A brine consisting of 1 cup fresh lemon juice, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup water, and
* 2 teaspoons salt

Directions

Combine the brine ingredients and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Place the carrots, garlic, jalapenos, and peppercorns in the jar, then carefully pour the hot brine over the top, leaving half an inch of headspace. Screw lid on firmly, then store in the refrigerator for at least two weeks before enjoying.

Apple Pie Gelato with Caramel Stracciatella

2011-10-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

We don’t drink a lot of juice at my house, but I couldn’t resist the amazing apple cider from Suprima Farms at the Lunenburg Farmers’ Market this week. As long as we were having a treat, I decided to go whole hog. And ended up with this:

Ingredients

2 ½ cups apple cider

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 cinnamon sticks

2 cups heavy cream

½ cup milk

6 egg yolks

½ cup white sugar

½ cup caramel sauce (store bought or homemade—it’s easy! Try this recipe).

Directions

Heat apple cider in a saucepan over high heat. Reduce the cider to 3/4 -1 cup, stirring frequently. Remove from heat, add vanilla, stir, and set aside.

Place the cinnamon sticks in a closed plastic bag and smash to shards with a hammer. Combine cinnamon shards with heavy cream a in a saucepan. Bring mixture to a simmer over medium low heat and simmer, stirring frequently, for ten minutes. Remove pan from heat, cover, and set aside to steep for one hour.

After an hour, strain shards out of the cream. Return strained cream to a clean pan. Whisk in yolks and sugar. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently and scraping the bottom of the pan, until custard thickens, about ten minutes.

Remove custard from heat and whisk to combine with milk and reduced apple cider. Refrigerate mixture overnight, then process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Just before removing from machine, pour caramel sauce into the machine in a slow stream to form a ribbon. Remove to a container and freeze until hard, 2-3 hours.

This one passes the self-control test—as in, you won’t have any, so proceed with caution. Enjoy!

Seed Starter

2011-03-13T18:27:00.001-07:00

...is it already that time again? The garden has turned from slushy to boggy, the birds are singing, and little pink nubs of rhubarb are sticking their heads obstinately from the half-frozen soil. So yep, we're starting seeds.

I owe a great debt of thanks to the fine folks at Hope Seeds, Annapolis Seeds, and Broadfork Farm for all the excellent heritage plants we're putting in the ground this year. Our gardens will include raspberry canes, grape vines, two varietals of kale, rhubarb, strawberries, rainbow chard, rutabaga, corn, pumpkins and two other winter squash, zucchini, cauliflower, 5-7 varietals of tomato (we'll see what comes back from last year), parsley, dill, cilantro, lavender, basil, mint, chives, rosemary, two varietals of sweet pepper, three varietals of hot pepper, and 200 heads of garlic.

Jeez louise, it's starting to sound less like a garden and more like a farm! Now if only we could keep chickens in the town of Lunenburg...

The Real Food Diet

2011-02-17T07:34:00.000-08:00

One of the (many) reasons I became a local food advocate has to do with body weight. Like many of us, I have struggled with weight issues since I was a teenager. In the decades since then I have had periods of being slender and periods of being heavy. The slender times, however, have never been healthy ones--I lost weight eating heavily processed "diet" meals and smoking cigarettes. Whenever I returned to eating regularly I put weight back on, and when I quit smoking I put a lot of weight on. I have only lost weight sustainably--in other words, been able to lose weight and keep it off without extreme effort--by eating whole, organic, local, fresh foods, the kinds I blog about here and for South Shore Now.

It seems evident that human beings have an instinctual drive to eat not just to satiate hunger, but to meet our nutritional needs. Most nutrients and micronutrients (not all of which we even yet understand) are refined out of the foods featured in a Standard North American Diet. Eating low quality food while trying to lose weight is like trying to pick up a tree limb with tweezers--the tool just isn't up to the job. When you change your body, you need extra energy to effect the change, not less!

I still struggle with my weight, and it's higher than I'd like. What I can tell you, though, is that I now easily maintain a weight far below my all-time high, thanks to my focus on real foods. I also have far more energy, better health, and happier moods than I did during my cigarette smoking, Lean Cuisine eating, size 8 days. It's a trade-off I'm happy to take.

Winter Dishes

2011-01-24T19:24:00.000-08:00

I've been working on food styling for my most recent project... here's a bit of what I came up with this weekend.

Slacker Update

2010-08-20T07:31:00.000-07:00

This blog has been quiet lately... mostly because I've been busy promoting the Lunenburg Farmers' Market on facebook and keeping a local foods blog for the newspaper--visit it here! I'm also working on a book proposal about eating local in Nova Scotia to pitch at Word on the Street next month, so I'll be back soon with updates about that. Cross your fingers for me!

Extra Local Yum

2010-07-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned recently how much I love farmers' markets? There's just nothing that can compare with actually getting to know the people who produce your food. I recently began facebook groups for both markets in Lunenburg (summer and winter) and will be writing producer profiles for them soon. I'll be sharing them here, but in the meantime, enjoy this little piece of Canadiana:

Farmers make this country great!

Scape it Up

2010-07-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

It's garlic scape season, and most folks here on the South Shore are eating them left, right, and centre before they turn tough on the stalk. Since we're growing all our own garlic for the year we have a loooooooot of scapes... I decided to come up with a way to save them for a rainy day. Or a snowy day. Or, in the case of this particular recipe, a snotty, sniffly, need-food-as-medicine day.

Scape and Ginger Bisque

Ingredients
2 cups garlic scapes, snipped into half-inch pieces
2 cups chicken stock (I used a homemade stock that was already made with ginger, but plain old stock from the can or box works just fine. For you local peeps, I recommend the convenient-yet-fresh stock made and sold at The Biscuit Eater.)
1/2 cup pieces of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped into rough chunks
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Combine scapes, stock, and ginger in a stock pot. Heat on medium to a simmer, and simmer until scapes soften and just begin to turn drab green, about 20 minutes. Turn off heat and remove ginger chunks. Puree with an immersion blender (If you don't have an immersion blender--buy one! They're fabulous, save work and dishes, and cost about $15. OR simply pour into a stand blender, puree, and return to pot.) Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy immediately, or freeze until so moved by your palate.

Town and Gown and Field and Mountain

2010-05-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

My new article on sustainability and university/community relationships is out! Having the conversations with the sustainability coordinators and professors at these schools is such an enjoyable part of the job.

Gin Rhubarby

2010-04-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

The rhubarb is bountiful in the garden again, and so we're breaking out the gin. This springtime treat is too easy to even write out as a formal recipe--simply dice about two cups of fresh, clean rhubarb, pour a bottle of gin (we always use Bombay Saphhire)over it, cover, and refrigerate for a week. At the end of the week, strain the gin and enjoy with tonic. It's pink perfection. It's the taste of earth in the morning of the year. It's the soul of spring.

(Note: do not get carried away with the beautiful simplicity of this cocktail and try to replicate it with strawberries or some other bossy fruit, unless you're particularly fond of Kool-Aid. In which case I'd recommend making Kool-Aid with vodka--no sense wasting the juniper delights of gin.)

Dandelions Four Ways

2010-04-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Yellow blossoms are just starting to pop up in my yard and I'm determined to make the most of it this year. Nova Scotia is full of incredibly nutritious and tasty wild foods (I just realized that half the "weeds" in my garden last year were yummy lamb's quarters!) but I'm especially excited about dandelions--I can find and eat these virtually anywhere I go. We'll be making at least the first three preparations listed here in the coming weeks, as I already have a capper and bottlecaps. We'll see how much the wine-making equipment costs before committing to dandelion wine. If you try any of these, drop me a note and let me know how they turned out!

1. Dandelion Greens

Dandelion greens are best eaten early in the spring before the plant flowers (in other words, NOW!) Once the plant starts to flower the greens become much more bitter, although they are still edible. Pick and rinse dandelion greens to enjoy on a salad, or saute them for 20 minutes in olive oil with garlic and/or onions, finishing with a splash of wine. Delicious and ridiculously nutritious!

2. Dandelion Root Beer

Ingredients

1 gallon water
1 1/2 cups molasses
1 teaspoon yeast
4 ounces clean, peeled dandelion root

Directions

Mash the dandelion roots with a potato masher (alternatively, put them in a plastic baggie, give your five-year-old a hammer, and stand back). Put the mashed roots and the water in a pot, bring to a boil, and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain into a large container, add molasses, and cool to lukewarm. Once it is lukewarm, add the yeast and stir. Cover the container with a cloth and put it in a warm, draft-free spot. After two hours, pour the mixture into clean bottles to within 1/2 inch of the tops. Cap with capper and metal caps (available at any of these beer-and-wine shops that have popped up all over the place). Place the capped bottles on their sides in a warm, draft-free spot for 5 days, then set upright in a cool place. Root beer will be ready to drink in 10 days. Enjoy all summer long!

3. Dandelion Jelly

Ingredients

2 cups dandelion blossoms, separated from leaves and bracts (essentially all the green stuff) Pick midday when the blossoms are full.
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoon fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 1/4 teaspoons pectin

Directions

Boil flowers in water on medium heat for about 10 minutes. Strain petals from liquid and return liquid to a clean pot to boil. Add sugar, lemon juice, and pectin as per the instructions on your box of pectin. Boil and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon, skimming the foam, until the top surface becomes blobby and glasslike (2 or more minutes). If you know how to can, you can put this jelly in sterilized jars for year-long storage. If not, simply pour the jelly into containers and store in the fridge. This also freezes well, so feel free to stock some in your freezer for anytime! Dandelion jelly is dandy on toast and also as a condiment for meats.

4. Dandelion Wine

Ingredients

1 quart dandelion petals
3/4 pound chopped golden raisins
2 pounds sugar
3 lemons
3 oranges
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
7 1/2 pints water
wine yeast

Directions

Combine dandelion petals and water, bring to a boil, and simmer for two hours. Strain the liquid to remove the solids, return the liquid to the heat, and bring to a low boil. Zest the oranges and lemons and set aside. Juice the oranges and lemons and add the juice and the sugar to the boiling liquid, stirring well to dissolve. Add the zest and raisins, then remove from heat and set aside to cool. When the mixture reaches room temperature, stir in the yeast nutrient and activated yeast. Cover the mixture and put in a warm, draft-free spot. Stir 3 times daily for two weeks. After two weeks, strain the liquid again to remove solids and pour into a fermentation vessel (such as a bottle or jug) with a fitted airlock. After three weeks, remove airlock, skim any foam from the top of the liquid, and put the airlock back on. Repeat until fermentation is clearly finished, then store for a year before drinking. Worth the wait!

A tweet tweet

2010-04-13T15:34:00.001-07:00

Here's my new article on sustainability and social media on campus. Any excuse to mess around on twitter...

Sriracha-cha

2010-04-11T19:00:00.000-07:00

Now that I have a nanny here on weekdays, I have regained something resembling a weekend. And when I have a weekend, I can spend a good chunk of a day cooking meals ahead for the week. This weekend I made: 20 servings of a turkey, spinach, mushroom, onion, carrot, and green bean stew (about half local/organic and half conventional); 12 servings of pancakes fully loaded with last year's local organic strawberries and wild blueberries; and 2 family dinners worth of local, organic pork tenderloin with a Jack Daniel's, maple syrup, and Sriracha marinade.

Now it's that last item that I really want to talk about, see. I recently researched Tennessee whiskey for a work project. When I learned that it is A) filtered through maple sugar charcoal, then B) aged in oak casks that have been charred internally to caramelize the wood sugars, I thought, "Aha! Perfect affinity with maple syrup!" I've been playing around with sauces that balance maple syrup against Sriracha, and even trying to drum up a good liquor to throw in the mix. This did the trick in spades. Possibly the best damn pork I've had in my life--and the recipe couldn't be easier. Here ya go, folks:

Happy Jack Pork

Ingredients
1 -2 pounds of pork tenderloin

Marinade
1/2 cup Jack Daniel's
1/2 cup Sriracha
1/2 cup maple syrup

Sauce
1/2 cup Jack Daniel's
1/3 cup Sriracha
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup heavy cream

Directions
Mix the ingredients for the marinade thoroughly, then submerge the tenderloin in the marinade and refrigerate for 5-8 hours. Prehat oven to 375 F/190 C. Place pork with marinade in a baking pan and bake until no pink remains in the center (depending on the size/shape of your tenderloin, likely 45-80 minutes--if you aren't tenderloin-experienced begin checking at 45 minutes.) Remove pork from oven and prepare sauce by thoroughly combining the whiskey, maple syrup, and Sriracha in a saucepan and bringing to a boil. Boil for 4-5 minutes, remove from heat, and whisk in cream. Plate the pork, drizzle with sauce, and serve immediately. Enjoy!

***April 29, 2010: I hear from my aunt Sallea that you can substitute soy milk for the heavy cream in this recipe with good results. Thanks a bunch, Sallea! I love hearing from folks who try my recipes.***

Seedy Saturday

2010-03-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

It's ridiculously nice out right now--perfect weather for working in the garden, which I've been doing all morning. Yesterday I went to the local seed sale and exchange run by Rosemarie Bradley of Helping Nature Heal, "just to look". Here's (part) of what I came home with:

I was tickled pink to meet Owen Bridge of Annapolis Seeds there--he's a new seed seller here in Nova Scotia and a great asset to the local food scene. The newest gardener from Windhorse Farm was right next to him with a huge display of tantalizing offerings. I picked up a free compost poster for my office, too.

Spring has sprung! Have a wonderful growing season, everyone.

A Tale of Ginger Cardamom, aka the Best Ice Cream of my Life

2010-03-07T10:12:00.000-08:00

...and I made it without an ice cream maker. Colossal win.

One caveat: Start it at least 24 hours before you want to eat it. (Or rather, 24 hours before you plan to eat it; you'll want to eat it after you lick the first beater.)

Green Betty's Ginger Cardamom Ice Cream

Ingredients
1 1/3 cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
2 square inches of peeled fresh ginger (can be any dimensions, but roughly equivalent to this)
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 can sweetened condensed milk, chilled
1/3 cup minced candied ginger (Quality is important here--there's a lot of variation among candied gingers! Look for a tender interior with a powerful ginger taste and aroma. I get an excellent one, mildly suprisingly, from Bulk Barn here in Nova Scotia.)

Directions
The evening before, put the unopened can of sweetened condensed milk and the beaters in the refrigerator. Slice the fresh ginger thinly, place in a mixing bowl, and cover with the heavy cream. Add the ground cardamom, stir gently, cover, and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, remove the sweetened condensed milk, beaters, and mixing bowl from the refrigerator. Using a slotted spoon, strain the ginger slices out of the cream. Whip the cream until it begins to thicken, then add vanilla. Continue to whip until soft peaks form, then slowly add the sweetened condensed mik while continuing to beat until stiff peaks form. Gently fold in minced candied ginger until just combined. Transfer to a freezer-safe container, cover, and freeze for at least six hours before giving in.

Blueberries with Whipped Creme Fraiche and Honey

2010-03-07T05:25:00.000-08:00

So here's the recipe for the dessert we enjoyed at our potluck (adults, anyway; the kids enjoyed the monkey cookies!) Next time I might try adding just a touch of Grand Marnier.

Blueberries with Whipped Creme Fraiche and Honey

Ingredients
2 cups creme fraiche (see instructions below)
honey to taste
3 cups blueberries (lots of other fruits work well here; I can't wait to try it with grated apple and cinnamon!)

Directions
Beat the creme fraiche to soft peaks, then whip in honey for two minutes more. Softly fold in blueberries just as much as needed to combine thoroughly. Serve with a spring of mint if you've got it, or a smile if you don't.

To Make Creme Fraiche

Mix four tablespoons of buttermilk into two cups of heavy cream in a glass or pryex container and stir until thoroughly blended. (It is best to make creme fraiche in the morning, and wise to do so the day before you'll need it.) Cover and leave sitting in a warm spot in your kitchen for 4-12 hours. Stir every two hour or when you think of it. When you notice that the mixture has started to thicken, transfer it to the refrigerator, where it will thicken further.

Potluck!

2010-03-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we got together with a group of friends for a local foods potluck. We brought blueberries that I picked last fall at the Lunenburg County Winery--really just down the road from us--served with whipped creme fraiche and honey (recipe in the next post!) Here are a few highlights of the day:

Charlie learning from his favorite person in the world.

Playing pass the baby

Our gracious hosts!

Mama, poet, and culinary genius Alice Burdick.

(Most of) The Gang

Monkey Cookies Redux, Fair Trade Coffee, and all that Jazz

2010-03-04T18:07:00.000-08:00

Hey folks,

I've been working on a Big Important Post explaining why I stopped being a minister and started writing about food. It'll be up soon. In the meantime, however, amuse yourself with this eye candy:

These are the same monkey cookies we made last year, this time photographed pre-baking. (You can see that one smart monkey has figured out that they're heading for the oven.) The licorice defied me as usual--so while most of 'em were smiling going in, at least half looked fairly disconcerted coming out.

I've been doing some social media work for Laughing Whale Coffee, one of my many wonderful clients. Here's a shot I took in their roasting facility at last week's farmer's market (in addition to producing a fabulous suite of fair trade, organic, ultra-low emissions roasted coffees, they also host the winter market here in Lunenburg!)

Last but not least, here's my sous-chef mugging for the camera. I know. I'm lucky.

Green Cuisine

2010-02-23T10:34:00.000-08:00

My new article on the sustainability movement in culinary education came out today. This was a fun job from (local, sustainable) soup to (organic, homegrown) nuts.

Green Dreams

2010-02-17T06:33:00.000-08:00

Ho hum, another year, another garden. A snowy day in late February feels like the perfect time to start planning.

This year I'm going to be strict about growing in complementary relationship to the farmer's market. In other words, if I can buy the produce locally and affordably (and organically, of course) then I'm better off supporting the farmers than growing it myself. That means crossing off several plants we've grown in the past: beans, peas, lettuce, kale, tomatoes, corn, squash... the list goes on.

Instead, I'd like to grow more of what we do well and use completely (garlic, herbs, rhubarb, and berries) with a couple unusual additions. I've written before about my desire to grow saffron crocus, and now we have concrete plans to put in the corms this summer. John still wants to grow hops for beer, but those will probably still wait a bit.

The big news is that we're seriously considering a beehive for the backyard. We have the great good fortune to have an experienced beekeeper, Perry Brandt, down the street who has offered to take me to visit his hives and help me get a feel for things. I have my eye on a top bar hive. If everything goes according to plan, in 2-3 years I'll be producing my own saffron honey. Who says I don't have a Martha Stewart complex?

Macadamia Chocolate Bliss

2010-02-13T16:11:00.000-08:00

These cookies are more delicious than love itself. And given the protein in the nut butter, far more nourishing. Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon vanilla (yes, that is a whompload of vanilla)
1 cup macadamia nut butter (hazelnut also works well here)
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
6 1/2 to 7 ounces dark chocolate, broken into small chunks (I whack up a couple bars of Scharffen Berger with a hammer--very satisfying!)

Directions

Put a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Butter cookie sheets. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. In a separate bowl, beat together the nut butter, butter, and brown sugar. Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla, and beat until thoroughly combined.

Stir the flour mixure into the nut butter mixture until well integrated. Add chocolate chunks and blend until evenly mixed. Using your hands, form balls of about 1 inch each, flatten slightly, and put on cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake 13-15 minutes or until just browned. Makes about 3 dozen.

Horchata

2010-01-31T14:03:00.000-08:00

A couple foodie friends and I are putting together a Mexican potluck tomorrow, and I volunteered to make horchata. Which I've never done before. (But has that ever stopped me?) Horchata is the perfect drink to quench the fires of a spicy salsa--the starchy rice soaks heat off your tongue just like a tortilla, and the sweet, bland, milky liquid washes the oils right down your throat.

To my dismay, however, I quickly discovered that's there's no real consensus on how to make horchata or even what the ingredients are--although nearly every recipe I looked at included rice, cinnamon, vanilla, and some sort of sugar.

So what's a cook to do? Experiment, experiment, experiment, I say. And sure enough, after a couple of spectacular failures (pretty sure you're supposed to drink it, not eat it!) I hit upon a winning hybrid of the many recipes that tempted me. In the end it was really pretty easy--provided you have a spice grinder, which I do. Here's what I came up with:

Green Betty's Gringa Horchata

Ingredients

1 C rice (You're going to grind it anyway, so does it really matter what kind? I think not. I used basmati.)
1 cinnamon stick, hammered into shards
8 C water
1 can (300 mL) sweetened condensed milk
1 t vanilla
1 t ground cinnamon

Directions

Grind your rice in a spice grinder or food processor to cornmeal consistency, cover with water, add your cinnamon stick shards, and let sit for about 12 hours. Strain the liquid through cheesecloth and add sweetened condensed milk, vanilla, and ground cinnamon. Serve cold over ice. Add rum if the situation calls for it. ;-)

Soup Tales

2010-01-14T19:23:00.000-08:00

Here at Green Betty's house we’ve been cooking and baking our way through children’s literature—recent incarnations have included lemon meringue pie (ours sported a walnut/brown butter/fleur de sel crust), carrot soup, and morning cake, to name a few.

I realized recently that my five year old's delight in making the stuff of stories could be turned to my advantage. So the other day, after deciding to make a saag for dinner, I told him a gnome tale.

Rinky, Dinky, and Sly Go to Goa

Every gnome loves a mermaid-laden, white sand beach, not to mention buffets that feature vindaloos. So one day, the gnomes of Lunenburg decided to pack up and head to Goa. (That's in India, y'all.)

They couldn't afford the plane fare, so they packed themselves up in a box and had their Uncle Googly mail it to a classy resort. It took a couple weeks to arrive, but they were comfortable in their crate--Rinky'd had the foresight to stock up on historical fiction (every gnome's favorite read) for the trip, and jerky treats were abundant.

After a few days of spicy shrimp, spicy fish, spicy pork, spicy fruit, and spicy rice, the gnomes were ready for something a little milder. They sampled some north Indian saag--a delightful concotion of spinach, yogurt, broth, and tasty-but-not-incendiary spices.

As an added bonus, when gnomes eat saag it gives them a burst of Popeye-like strength! Rinky, Dinky, and Sly used theirs to pick up an elephant. (They had to ask the elephant to hold one of her feet up, since there were only three of them.) Unfortunately, the saag wore off mid-trick and the elephant came crashing down. That's the last time she does a favour for gnomes.

This incident was the first in what eventually developed into an epic tale of the gnomes' culinary adventures overseas--but the rest, as they say, is a story for another time.

There is nothing Charlie would like better than to pick up an elephant, of course, so he begged me to make saag. I modified the recipe to make a soup of it, and now he’s guaranteed to slurp it with gusto every time. If only I'd caught on sooner.

Saag Soup (aka Swamp Soup)

Ingredients
2 T butter
1 onion, finely minced
6 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced
2 t ginger powder
2 t ground coriander
1/2 t turmeric
1/2 t cayenne
1 lb baby spinach leaves
2 1/2 C chicken stock (see recipe below)
1 1/2 t salt
1 C yogurt

Directions
Heat the butter in a large saucepan on medium. Add minced onions and salt and sauté until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic and spices and sauté for another two minutes.

Stir in the stock and spinach and bring to a boil. Reduce heat slightly and simmer for ten minutes or until spinach is thoroughly cooked but still a springy shade of green (if it reminds you of the military, you've gone too far). Remove from heat and blend, either with an immersion blender (my fave) or by processing into a stand blender or food processor then returning to the pan. Simmer the pureé another couple minutes, then add yogurt, adjust seasonings if warranted, and serve.

Hint: For good quality spices at a reasonable price, try an Indian grocery store. Mine come from Indian Groceries in Halifax. Great place.

Chicken Stock

To make chicken stock, first roast a chicken (organic and local if you can get/afford it). After you've stripped the meat from the carcass, put the entire carcass in a crock pot or stock pot and fill in the empty spaces with vegetables--to make stock for this dish, I recommend keeping it simple with just roughly chopped onion (2 cups) and peeled, whole garlic cloves (2 bulbs). Throw in a healthy pinch of salt and just cover with water. Add half a cup of white vinegar (this will leach the calcium from the bones, making for a more nutritious stock.) Bring the whole mess to a boil, then simmer, covered, for 3 hours (stock pot) to 5 hours (crock pot). Remove the bones and big chunks, then strain the broth through cheesecloth (I get mine at the dollar store). Chill in the fridge for a few hours, strain off the fat that rises to the top, and you're good to go.

Post-Holiday Still Life

2010-01-10T09:47:00.000-08:00

Pancake Perfection

2009-09-14T16:29:00.000-07:00

I love blueberry pancakes, and yet they madden me when done wrong. Which they usually are. Perfectly fresh blueberries, I find, are a little too wet and juicy for ideal pancaking. They gush and squirt, in the worst case scenario they create a wet (albeit tasty) puddle in the middle of a pancake, damaging its integrity. On top of that, the intensity of their flavor usually leaves me unsatisfied.

Dried blueberries, unfortunately, aren’t much better. They are too dry. They are too chewy. They refuse to share their flavor with the surrounding batter, the stingy little bastards.

I’ve gone so far as to make a batch of pancakes with half fresh and half dried blueberries. Fail. They embodied the worst of both worlds. The dog, at least, thought they were fabulous.

Recently, thanks to a gift from my lovely hubby, I started drying my own blueberries. Nova Scotia blueberries are selling for fifty cents a pound this season. The results are beyond compare. Made from local berries picked at the height of ripeness and quickly dried, they have a depth of flavor unsurpassed by anything I’ve ever found in a store—and I’ve paid some ridiculous prices for Very Special Organic Dried Blueberries in my day.

Normally it takes 10-18 hours to properly dehydrate blueberries (depending on size). Last week, I stopped my dehydrator a couple hours into the process to check and see how they were coming along. The berries were just starting to wrinkle up, their skins still soft. I took a couple out and bit in. A hot, rich gush of juice flooded my mouth. They were… THE PERFECT PANCAKE BERRIES. Embodying just the right degree of wetness in combination with a soft exterior that broke upon pressure, they obligingly released hot, concentrated juice into my mouth. As, I quickly deduced, they would into a pillow of surrounding batter.

I expect that you can even freeze fresh berries, defrost them the day before, and pull this trick out of your hat in February. I'll certainly be trying it. (Warning: do NOT try this with blueberries bought “fresh” at the supermarket that have been shipped from Chile or someplace equally ridiculous—they will taste like soggy cardboard. Scout's honor.)

The Perfect Blueberry Pancake
Ingredients
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups whole milk (goat's milk works well here)
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus additional melted butter
Fresh-grated zest of one lime
2 1/2-pints of fresh, local blueberries, dehydrated for 2 hours to about 2 pints

Preparation
Preheat pan on medium. Whisk both flours and next 3 ingredients in large bowl. Whisk milk and eggs in medium bowl. Gradually whisk milk mixture into dry ingredients. Mix in 3 tablespoons melted butter, lime zest, and blueberries.

Coat the pan with melted butter. Working in batches, pour batter by 1/4 cupfuls onto griddle. Cook until bottoms brown. Turn pancakes over and cook until second side browns. Times vary, so keep checking until you get a feel for it.

Cook according to taste. I like my pancakes cooked in ample butter, so that one needn’t add more at the table. Pancakes cooked this way keep well wrapped up and make great stand-alone snacks to take here, there, and everywhere!

This is a handy brunch dish, as it’s ideal to put the blueberries in the dehydrator two hours before you start making the pancakes so they’ll be hot when you add them to the batter. If that’s not possible, however, they are still excellent if concentrated the day before and then refrigerated. Enjoyeux, mes amis!

Baby Hogheart Tomato

2009-08-18T19:20:00.001-07:00

The Web of Facebook

2009-08-10T12:53:00.001-07:00

Delivered August 9, 2009, at the Universalist Unitarian Church of Halifax

The first time I ever had a look at facebook I thought, frankly, that it was just awful.

People seemed to be posting things like, “I came home from work and took a shower” or “I had Thai food for lunch. It was good.” The very format struck me as the epitome of navel gazing. Or rather, navel gazing and then displaying the lint you’d picked out to the world. I couldn’t imagine why I would care. I certainly didn’t want to get involved. Whenever someone mentioned facebook I had a whole spiel at the ready about how I wasn’t into that kind of thing and I could get my social needs met in real life and blah di blah di blah di blah.

Then, about a year ago, I signed up for my own account. I entered into it in what seems to be the usual way, begrudgingly and out of necessity. Facebook was the only communication channel that the Halifax-based homeschooling group Comedy of Errors used. I was too keen to know what they were doing and when to let the social media website aspect put me off.

Once I had dipped my toes in the ocean, however, old acquaintances slowly began to contact me from the four corners of the globe and pass the word on to other friends that now Elisabeth, too, was on facebook. As they began to contact me I slowly sank into the sand, barely paying attention to what was going on at my feet as I became incontrovertibly entrenched.

They say to preach what you know and explore your passions, and frankly, facebook has been at the nexus of mine for a while now. It was the first thing that leapt to mind when Dean asked me to preach today. Still, I was concerned it might not seem relevant to everyone here (and hopefully I’ve already established my abhorrence for navel gazing).

But when it came time to submit a description to the newsletter, Dean didn’t call me to ask for the sermon topic. And he didn’t send me an email. He sent me a message on Facebook. And within ten minutes of receiving his message, facebook sent me a link from UUplanet.tv to an article in the UUWorld about congregations using facebook to deepen their connections with congregants and widen community exposure to their churches, and I said, “okay, facebook it is. Perhaps not so navel-y after all.”

One of the first people to track me down once I’d joined was Nancy, a friend of mine from high school. Nancy was the vice-president of our drama club. I was the secretary. We’d been fast friends during the teenage years, before going our separate ways. Nancy had kept in touch with several dozen people from our hometown, and before I knew it I was chatting with all the people we’d eaten pizza with at lunchroom tables all those years ago. Back in high school it was Nancy who had introduced me to the Grateful Dead and, I guess not incidentally, other pleasures.

Unsurprisingly, she still has wonderful things to offer me decades later.
We’re both major foodies now, Michael Pollan-following organic, local, sustainable types. It’s something I often write about on my blog and in my professional writing, while Nancy’s done me one better and started a small, organic farm with her husband’s family in their home community of Northfield, Minnesota. Her day job is at an upscale food market, and we both like to check in on facebook at the end of a long day, to talk about children and books and wonderful food.

In fact, food and facebook have seemed to go hand in hand for me in a marvellous number of ways. Sylvia, one of my favourite professors from college, incited massive jealousy by telling me about the new Brazilian restaurant in Tucson. I sent her the recipe for my chile chocolate wedding cake, and she posted a link for all her friends to see. Some of my most interesting updates come from Henry, a Taiwanese architect, photographer, and inveterate foodie living in Quito, who takes gorgeous pictures of Ecuadorian street food to post on facebook. For those of you who remember my apple sermon, you may be interested in a tip Henry gave me: his mother used to soak apple slices in a bowl of cold brine in the refrigerator on hot days. They’re just delicious.

On Thursday mornings, I go to our famer’s market, where I talk to real life friends, then go home, put away and process freezer stock, and then I get on facebook to say, “hey, everyone, here’s what I got at the farmer’s market this week and here are the delicious, sexy things I’m planning on doing with it; how about you?” and all sorts of people respond, from friends I had just said hello to at the market, to Joy, whose mother’s farm-fresh tomatoes I ate as a child, but who now lives and surfs in Hawaii. Susan, who I sang with in the Carl Sandburg Children’s Choir, posts pictures of her gorgeous preserves. Natalie, who dated my older brother in high school, posts pictures of her purchases from the farmer’s market in my hometown of Galesburg, Illinois, so I know what’s in season just now where my parents live and can compare it with my own market and my own garden.

I used facebook to ask Doug, a college friend of mine who now works for our alma mater, to help me connect with current student food activists at our school for an article I was writing, and he in turn used facebook to send me a link to an article about Monsanto “unintentionally” spraying the organic crops in the fields of Iowa farmer and Grinnell College dining hall food provider Andy Dunham.

Marya, who I met at a summer program in Vermont twenty years ago, links from facebook to her blog Accidental Vegetables, about her adventures with community supported agriculture in Portland, Maine. From her I stole the idea of rhubarb infused gin, which I promptly made and served to my friend Nilanjana. Nilanjana lives at 122 Our Street in Lunenburg and I live at 211 Our Street in Lunenburg, and when we make plans to get together and enjoy rhubarb gin or a tomato and lemon thyme granita, we do it over facebook. It’s turned out to be just the right tool to connect my interests in local food with an international web, honing my postmodern sense of the local.

Facebook has even helped me make new foodie friends, like Alice, who lives in the next village over. I had met Alice in passing a few years ago when I asked her to sign one of her books for me, but we didn’t really know one another. Then facebook’s automated system began suggesting to me, fairly insistently, that we might really want to be friends because we had so many other friends and interests in common. I ran into her at the farmer’s market in her village and said something utterly dorky, like, “facebook wants us to be friends!” Luckily, she thought it was a fine idea and we made a date for coffee. Alice came to my house for the first time this week. She wrote me a message on facebook to ask me where I lived. I sent her a message back with a picture of the front of my house and directions from the farmer’s market in my village.

Thanks to facebook, I’ve taken nearly everyone I’ve ever known who is also computer literate, thrown them up in the air, and let them bounce down into new coalescing configurations. One of the people I’ve most enjoyed getting to know again, and another old choir friend, Kerry, who grew up with me in Illinois and now lives in Maryland, surprised me by being facebook friends with Joanne Elder Gomes from the Fredericton congregation. It was a most unexpected joy to explore what passions the three of us had in common. When my old roommate Ross in LA got a teaching position at the college in Northfield, Nancy’s hometown, I was able to introduce them (over facebook, of course) so she can hook him up with the best local food sources in their part of Minnesota. In Ross’s case, that means especially finding the good doughnuts. I was proud to help.

The process of creating community on facebook has had its surprises. Many people I thought were absolutely fascinating when I was young are... not. People I had no use for in college turn out to be hidden treasures. The lesson here apparently is that I have terrible judgement, or used to, at least. At this point I’m convinced that it’s best to postphone major life decisions until you’re at least thirty and only then if you had a happy childhood. It’s been odd to get reacquainted with so many people from my past, and odder still to have them interact with one another in a single, albeit virtual, space.

To be honest, facebook appeals to my personal strengths, and it’s not equally for everyone. One of the things I like best about the format is that it lets me carry on conversations in real time, while allowing me to edit for the kinds of dumb, blurty things I often say when I’m speaking with my mouth. It’s a great way for blurty mouthed people to connect. My wit sparkles best when I take a second to shine it before I show it off.

Like many of my generation I’ve moved here, there, and everywhere in my adult life. Given my postmodern, fractured existence, I haven’t really known the kind of social cohesion that has been the normal experience of the vast majority of humanity. I feel a bit like flotsam on the ocean, sometimes, in Lunenburg. I’m cast adrift from everything I knew before. Despite its downsides, I had gotten used to my pieced-up life, and having a space for it to be knit together has made me feel whole at some times and socially naked at others.

Facebook connects me with the world, with the earth. It brings me closer to people I see every day in my neighbourhood, and with friends who’ve experienced me in all my stages and moods and hairstyles, from people who changed my diapers to people who’ve learned how to diaper from me. It’s scary and it’s fabulous. Standing up for my beliefs in front of a wide audience, one that includes friends of my family and many social conservatives, for instance, is often discomfiting. And yet it grounds me in my beliefs to stand up for the rights of babies to nurse when and where they are hungry, and of their mothers to feed them peacefully and without prejudice.

I love how facebook connects me with people far away, but I love even more how it connects me with people in my community. Not only do I foster valued friendships with people I know in “real” life, but I get a sense of their friends and wider communities, as well, which helps me to get to know them in ways that I might not necessarily without facebook, and also introduces me to other people in my community and throughout Nova Scotia. I still haven’t been to any of the Comedy of Errors events, although I am well informed about what I’m missing.

Facebook is a corrective for our multifaceted, postmodern culture, full of people like me who move long distances several times in their lives. I am moored by facebook, by a web of people who have known different aspects of me, know my family of origin, think of me as they knew me then, underneath what they know of me now. It’s sane making. Facebook is a virtuality that creates a reality.

The desire to make many rich deep connections in multiple aspects of being is human. It’s normal mammalian behaviour. Facebook is a new way of doing an old and beautiful thing. With bad ads and some annoying games—but on second thought, that’s not so new, either. There are other negative aspects to facebook, of course; for instance I wasted approximately million hours while writing this sermon by fooling around on facebook and pretending that it was research.

All of our readings today are unsolicited pieces shared with me on facebook in the last couple weeks or so... the Smokey the Bear Sutra came to me from the aforementioned Alice. Our closing words today come from Sylvia Bass West, former director of lifespan learning for the CUC. She happened to post them five minutes before I sent the order of service to Sandra this past Wednesday, just as I was searching frantically for one more piece to round it out. I was very grateful. The Maira Kalman piece was posted by Doug in Iowa. And both the opening words and the Mark Belletini reading were offered by the Rev. Matthew Cockrum, a seminary classmate of mine who is particularly gifted at finding and sharing meaningful words.

Facebook is an ocean, and guess what, that’s where the fish are, bobbing on a sea of connection, between people and information, people and technology, people and people. As Fritz Kuehn at the First Unitarian church of Dallas puts it, “The ideal is that a real multigenerational, multiethnic, multi-interest opportunity conversation happens in a unified space.” For me, and countless others, facebook has been an qualitatively invaluable digital web of interconnected being that doubles as a safety net for the disposessed of the postmodern age. It is infused with qualitative worth. In other words, there is no price you can put on knowing and being known.

But don’t get me started on twitter.

Au Revoir, Isabelle

2009-06-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

A good friend from the farmer's market is leaving us to help take care of a new grandbaby. We have a wonderful goodbye party at the Laughing Whale--believe me, when a bunch of organic farmers and foodies decide to have a party, they can really bring it! I had the honor of giving her goodbye address--here's an excerpt:

We’re all here today to say goodbye to Isabelle. I know that everyone here is thrilled for her to have this opportunity to be close to grandchildren and to go forth into new adventures. And I know that everyone here is sad for themselves to be saying goodbye. She will be so missed.

When I first moved to Lunenburg six years ago and came to the farmer’s market that spring, I couldn’t believe the line at Vendeene. For weeks, I was too intimidated to join it. My husband and I made jokes about what illicit substances were being dealt out of that little blue cooler. I didn’t understand. Could the bread really be that good? Or was it the charming personality behind the counter? Now I know it was both.

Once I did start standing in that line, Isabelle quickly became the guiding star of the market for me--as she has been for so many others. Her tremendous kindness and diplomacy have come to the fore whenever I have tried to speak French. She’s taken the time to know my family, and share hers with me, especially pictures of her gorgeous granddaughter, Danica. I’d like to think I’m special, but I know she shares herself as lovingly and generously with many, many people. Isabelle has an art for making everyone feel special.

I’ve been asking around about you, Isabelle, in preparation for speaking today. People have told me that you are gifted at making a gorgeous meal out of whatever is in season. And that at every market you arrive and literally dance across the parking lot singing “allo” to everyone there. You know your customers like nobody’s business, and tell them their orders just as often as the other way around. Your hugs last a week—or at least last you for a week! And everyone knows that if you’re feeling down, you should just go talk to Isabelle. She’ll tell you that you look wonderful and smile at you with a twinkle in her eye, and the day will improve.

If every vendor at the market is a bead on a chain, Isabelle has been the clasp that completes the circle. Goodbye, Isabelle. Thank you for being with us while you were with us, and take our love and our blessings into the future, to accompany you wherever you go. To Isabelle!

Comfy Bed

2009-06-07T15:25:00.000-07:00

This was the perfect sunny Sunday to get our new raised bed set up. There's an ill amount of our own compost in there, along with two varieties of tomato (Hogheart and Amish Paste) and two lettuces from BW. John's putting his chile seedlings in the other half. In the background are rhubarb, corn, spinach, a touch of kale, carrots, and a ridiculous amount of garlic.

Tea Time

2009-06-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I never tried tea with fresh leaves before. Same concept as tea with dried leaves--just put them in a teapot (or in my case, measurinng bowl), pour hot water over them, steep, strain, and drink.

These is peppermint and lemon balm from Rumtopf Farm. Just beyond delicious.

Hot Cold Spicy Yum

2009-06-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

This must be one of the best ideas I've ever had.

(Okay, it was actually my four year old's idea. But I made him, so does that count?)

Mexican Hot Chocolate Popsicles

Ingredients

2 cans of sweetened condensed milk
5 oz unsweetened chocolate (like always, I prefere Scharffen Berger)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinammon (fresh ground if you can manage it)
a pinch of chile powder
a generous handful of mini-marshmallows
cream to taste

Directions

Heat milk and chocolate over gentle heat until chocolate is melted and fully incorporated, then add vanilla, cinammon, and chile. Stir until well-blended. Taste the liquid--if it's too sweet for you, thin with cream until it reaches the desired level. Add mini-marshmallows and stir until they are melted about halfway (they will continue to melt after you pour the popsicles). Remove from heat and pour the mixture into popsicle molds--or if you want to go old-school, an ice cube tray. Insert popsicle sticks (or if you're using an ice cube tray, cover the top with plastic wrap and poke toothpicks into each square). Freeze overnight. Enjoy!

Tricks are for Kids

2009-05-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

My favorite Secret Mommy Trick for infusing fresh, local produce into the diet of my carbohydrate-loving four year old is to make stocks. Lots and lots of them, brimming with with chicken or beef bones and whatever's in season. Today's stock features spring greens of the south shore of Nova Scotia: stinging nettles and parsley from Sustenance Gardens, asparagus and fiddleheads from Donna at the Mahone Bay farmer's market, and both regular chives and garlic chives from my own garden. (Plus there's a whole chicken from MacNeill Farms under there somewhere, trust me!) I just rinse it all off, dump it in the crockpot with a couple cups of water, and walk away for the afternoon.

Later, I'll compost the vegetables, strain the broth, and strip the chicken carcass. The broth will go into the fridge until a solid layer of fat forms on the top. I'll strain this off and put it in a separate container. Then I'll use some of the fat to toast grains of rice before cooking it in the broth. Put a little parmesan cheese on top and the plain, shredded chicken on the side, and there's a delicious, organic, local, nutrition-packed, picky-proof meal for the little one. Oh, and me too. ;-)

More for the Compost Heap

2009-05-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

When push comes to shove, I'm an imprecise cook. Inventive, experienced... even inspired, at times. But give me an exact procedure such as those common to pastry-making, and I sink to the bottom of the class.

So it was not a surprise when my stinging nettle soup failed. One is supposed to wear gloves to destem and chop the nettles before cooking. That sounded like a recipe for a kitchen full of little nettle-y bits to me. Instead, I dumped them whole into the soup, theorizing that I could strip the leaves from the stems after they cooked, avoiding the stingyness altogether. That didn't turn out to be a valid theory.

Well, I don't get too fussed about Cooking Gone Wrong. If I didn't experiment, I wouldn't keep learning. Instead I started musing about how to use nettles successfully without chopping OR destemming. And by Jove, I think I've got it. Tomorrow I'm making a stewed chicken with nettles and garlic chives in the crockpot. It's an easy recipe that makes both the chicken and a fabulous stock in one fell swoop.

I'll report back soon. Cross your fingers for me.

Bucolica

2009-05-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

First outdoor market of the year. Gluten free bakers, saxophone players, and Glad Gardens friends from the Valley with enormous rhuarb and verging-on-obscene asparagus. They built a log greenhouse over the winter and invited me to come check it out. Local chefs with crepes and pates, the welcome addition of a menu from Vendeene. Babies everywhere.

Later, visiting friends inland, a warm, summery day. Ate French pastries from the market with blueberry tea. Kids fed dandelions to the chickens and chased the kitties through the wildflowers. Hills of fresh spring grass, glowing. Then home again, home again, to the cool sea air.

Linky Goodness

2009-05-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

My new article on Art and Climate Change is available here. Almost as much fun as writing about food!

Immaculate Caffination

2009-05-06T17:26:00.001-07:00

The other day I went down to Laughing Whale Coffee for a personalized tour of their exciting, new, ultra-low emissions roaster. They haven't picked it's permanent name yet--for now it's going by "Joe Green".

Joe is a heck of a sight to behold. An 18 kilogram roaster made by US Roaster Corp, it takes up rougly the same square footage as my entire kitchen. The computerized controls with touchpad are impressive, as is the huge roasting barrel, but it's the wide, black, floor-to-ceiling catalytic tower that takes the cake. Smoke from the roaster spirals up into the catalytic burner, which incinerates the particulate in the smoke at a temperature of 575 degrees Fahrenheit. The output is very hot, 98% emissions-free air--which can then be redirected into the roaster or released through a vent at the top of the building. A former energy consultant, owner Steve Zubalik is contemplating adding a heat exchanger to allow them to use the hot air for building heat and/or constructing a greenhouse on the roof which can be heated with the exhaust.

After our introductory, reverential pause in front of the roaster, Steve showed me around his operation. We inspected the various green beans and the distinctions among them (long story short: decaf is unappealling at every stage of the game), measured some into a plastic bucket, smelled them, and used a robot-gone-crazy type vacuum attachment to suck them up into the roaster. While we waited for the machine to get up to temp, Steve told me about their new Cafe Feminino coffees. Not only are they fair trade and organic, but they support community programs for women across South and Central America.

The roaster kicked into action. We watched the beans circulate through a doll-sized porthole and listened for the telltale signs of successful roasting: The first crack passed by, then the second crack, and then we watched the beans spill out into the cooling tray. I crunched one up while it was still warm. Delicious.

Steve sent me home with a bag of French Roast. Until about... three days ago, I hadn't been a fan of the dark roast. Now that I know what it tastes like when it's artisanally roasted to perfection, I can't go back. 'nuff said.

May! With Cookies!

2009-05-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

My office is a forest of seedlings. Tomatoes, regular broccoli, broccoli romanescu, kale, onions, beans, morning glories, moonflowers, marshmallow, and horehound surround me. The garlic and rhubarb outside the window are growing enormous. I am absurdly pleased. The first outdoor farmer's market, with produce from local greenhouses and the Annapolis Valley, is just a week and a half away.

I, of course, am celebrating with cookies. This fabulous recipe is a rip-off of a Martha Stewart recipe (that I tore out of a magazine at the bank whilst waiting for an appointment). I have always liked soft chocolate chip cookies but have never found any at the store made with natural ingredients. These will stay soft at least a couple days (and if there are any left after that, it means you didn't make 'em right!) As always, ingredient quality is key--especially the chocolate. Life is simply too short for bad chocolate.

Ingredients
1 1/4 C flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
7 Tbs unsalted butter at room temp
1/4 C white sugar
1/4 C packed brown sugar
1 large egg at room temp
1 tsp vanilla extract (or so; I always add a little extra)
3 Tbs creme fraiche (make your own! I explain how here)
3/4 C dark chocolate chips or chunks
3/4 C semisweet chocolate chips or chunks (I used a couple Scharffen Berger chocolate bars I got at the dollar store--I put them in a ziplock and beat them with a hammer until I like the size range of the shards. Diversity = yum.)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. Beat butter and sugars together, then add egg and vanilla. Combine until fully integrated, then add dry ingredients and creme fraiche. Stir in chocolate bits. Grease a cookie sheet and drop balls of dough on it, sizing to suit (I like little cookies), about 2 inches apart. Bake until the centers are set and the cookies are a pale golden brown, about 8-12 minutes, depending on the size of your cookies.

Enjoy! And you're welcome in advance.

Green Living: One Car Lane Closer

2009-04-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

I'm participating in Adbuster's Digital Detox Challenge this week and am therefore not hooked it to my usual news sources (I am naughty to be blogging, btw) but I couldn't resist sharing this article in the New York Times about a new concept for electric cars--one in which a robot removes and replaces the battery at a pit stop similar to a gas station--a not-gas station, I suppose. This out-of-the-chassis solution is so elegant and useful, it gave me chills.

Now if I could just find a robot to re-energize me in 45 seconds, we'd be made in the shade.

Easter Beans

2009-04-12T06:20:00.000-07:00

Ping Post

2009-04-10T16:05:00.001-07:00

Sexy new hybrid battery! (Yes, I just like hybrids) http://ping.fm/AiEU0

Something Old is New Again

2009-04-10T06:32:00.000-07:00

I've long been a fan of the simple solar cooker, so I was gratified to see that one won the Forum of the Future's Climate Challenge Competition (the runner-up evaporating tiles are pretty sexy, as well).

I'm digging on Garden Rant this morning, too. Growing your own vegetables? Easy? Yes. While I myself am going for a slightly more structured garden this year by building attractive raised beds(at least in the front yard, where people can see it) I warmly urge beginning gardeners to just dump a pile of dirt in a sunny spot, throw in a variety of seeds, and see what grows.

It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be organized. It doesn't have to be well-planned. It just has to be a garden. Once you've eaten something delicious from your very own dirt pile, you'll have the confidence to go from there. I promise.

2009-04-08T12:04:00.001-07:00

Testing ping... oddly popular with Canadian UUs!

Springy Thingy

2009-04-05T05:26:00.000-07:00

Very exciting! The last of the snow (hopefully) melted out of the yard yesterday and some brave early folks are peeking up (see below). Inside I've got pumpkins, broccoli, basil, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and kale started. I've been indulging in my favorite early spring hobby--pinching back excess seedlings and eating them. It's not even proper to call them baby vegetables. Fetal vegetables, perhaps. There's nothing to bring me into myself like the freshest, tiniest tidbits of spring. It's like I'm the cruel demigod of my own 1/4 acre.

Chives
Garlic
Rhubarb

And Now For Something Completely Different

2009-03-29T18:49:00.000-07:00

Woot! I won second place in a writing competition today. "Describe Your Perfect Orgasm in 10 Words or Less". Here's my lube-winning entry. (A little on the literary side for a blog contest, but it was the best I could come up with on short notice.)

My body: interlacing ribbons of joy, first woven, now unraveling.

And now that I've jinxed them to my blog, I'd like to extend a special welcome to my seminary professors, high school boyfriends, and, of course, my Mom. Hi Mom!

Monkey Cookies

2009-03-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

Okay all you facebook-y types, here it is.

Monkey Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:
1/2 pound unsalted butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
3 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour (I used Speerville Mills Whole White, which lent a naturalistic, ecru quality to the white dough)
1 bar (85 g or 3 oz) swemisweet chocolate (I used Scharffen Berger Chocolate that I got at the dollar store FOR A DOLLAR, or substitute your own *quality* chocolate)
licorce whips
chocolate chips

Directions:
Cream the butter, powdered sugar, salt, egg, yolk, and vanilla together to a smooth consistency. Add flour and blend just until evenly incorporated. Separate out 1/3 of the dough. Melt the chocolate on low heat and add to remaining 2/3 of dough, stirring no longer than necessary. Cover both doughs with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour (or in my case, overnight).

When you're ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 and grease a cookie sheet with butter. Roll out the chocolate dough first--you'll want to be zippy here and keep the dough cold but malleable, a balance you just have to get your own feel for. Cut into circles with a cookie cutter. Next, hand shape balls of the vanilla dough for the muzzle and ears. I recommend giving them a bit of dimension--it looks cuter on the finished product and gives you something to sink the licorice into (see below for examples of when I did not do this). Press them gently into the chocolate circles. Use chocolate chips for eyes and pieces of licorice whip for mouths, sized to fit. The licorice has a mind of its own, so push it well into the muzzle so it will hold its shape during baking.

Bake at 375 for about ten minutes.

And again people, these are the ones that didn't work out--monkeys gone awry!

Scallops Pernod

2009-03-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

Seriously. Golf balls. These are sitting in a scallop shell the size of a dessert plate.

The recipe's too easy to formally write out--toss scallops with olive oil, salt, and pepper, pan fry on high heat, turn off heat and remove scallops, deglaze the pan with a splash of pernod, and enjoy.

Who I'm Reading

2009-03-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

I'm a busy little writer these days, so not much time for blogging (or cooking, or gardening, or breathing...) but I thought you all deserved to know about my friend Naomi's blog, The Wonderment. For those of us who seek to find meaning and joy in everyday life (Oh wait, that's all of us!) Naomi's deep, loving, and pirate-y reflections infuse the heart.

Who else do I keep a close eye on? I follow blogs of several shades of green, but the only ones I actually want sending announcements to my inbox are Climate Progress and WorldChanging. For my foodie fix I turn to La Vida Locavore. Jill Richardson, the blogger behind La Vida Vlocavore, turned me on to Hyperlocavore, a boon to all us yard farmers. I've also been enjoying Accidental Vegetables, a witty foodie/drinkie blog by my old college friend Marya.

As far as my personal projects go, I have Brine interviews lined up this week with BW of Sustenance Gardens and Dawn of Biscuit Eater. Non-incidentally, I'm headed to Biscuit Eater tonight for a community meeting on alternative energy. Updates soon!

Forestry Fun

2009-03-17T07:11:00.000-07:00

My new article in ClimateEdu is out. I pitched the topic for this one--far more fun than taking an assignment!

Cap the Coal

2009-03-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Woot! Nova Scotia is considering a cap on emissions from coal-fired electricity. It's a step in the right direction, at least. Now to push Emera to solve their problems by turning to solar and wind power, rather than just marginally cleaning up their dirty operations...

Theological Tidbit #1

2009-03-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." - Bertrand Russell

I love this quote. When I get the book of my theology together, this will be listed under axiom #2: "We Don't Know Shit".

Notes from a dinner

2009-03-12T19:42:00.000-07:00

Pan friend scallops with truffle oil, fleur de sel, and black pepper. $12 a pound at this time of year, $7 in season. They're hours off the boat. Varied in size, but none small--regular ocean scallop to golf ball. Jimmy talked up the cod; Vietnamese fried cod tomorrow.

Kurt Wentzell's potatoes, simply baked.

Green chard and mild onion bisque. A little fresh-grated parmesan.

A few hours later, a barely-sweet baked apple pastry from Boulangerie la Vendeenne. Lovely, and--

Spring is just around the corner.

Whoopsie

2009-03-07T16:13:00.000-08:00

Found 'em. Blogging about it was, to borrow a metaphor from my early 20s, like lighting a cigarette to make the train come. Huzzah!

Corm Quandry

2009-03-07T07:13:00.000-08:00

My inner Martha Stewart has been whining up a storm lately.

"All I want to do for Christmas is give my friends and loved ones a beautiful little glass vial full of hand-harvested saffron. Is that too much to ask?"

Yes, Marty, apparently it is. And not because I'm unwilling to grow the lovely purple crocus sativus whose teeny, tiny stigma comprises a thread of saffron--I actually think they would be perfect set against the purply-blue foundation of the house--but because I can. not. find. them to save my life. Not in Canada, anyway, and US seed companies can't ship the corms (like a bulb) across the border.

What to do? I'm about to start spamming gardening forums and Craigslist across Canada in hopes of finding a saffron grower with too many darn corms on his hands. Wish me luck. Or, if you have a fairy godmother complex, send me corms. ;-)

Corn Free Betty

2009-03-01T06:24:00.000-08:00

I've been considering eliminating corn from my diet for a while, and I think it's time to take the plunge. Sound easy? Well, you might be surprised at where corn hides on the grocery shelf. Here's a fairly complete list I'll be using. Lots of luck finding--well, any processed food that doesn't contain at least one of these ingredients. Good thing I sure like cooking from scratch.

Why eliminate corn? Because I think that genetically modified crops are a really, really bad idea--and make no mistake, virtually all the corn used in contemporary food science is GM. And because I want to see if I can do it. It will be very difficult. And that, in itself, is pretty scary.

The good news? I can still eat corned beef. I think.

Flaming Chartreuse Tomato Soup

2009-02-25T16:14:00.000-08:00

This post is a big tease. I know I've been promising another Chartreuse recipe for some time. I've tried several. They were all bad. Chartreuse takes a back seat to no flavor. It's great for making beef taste gamy, if you like that.

I have discovered, however, that a splash of Chartreuse in my gin and tonic is delightful. And I recently found this recipe for Flaming Gin and Tomato Soup and thought, "Great Scot! A couple tablespoons of Chartreuse would work beautifully here! How did I never think to set it on fire before?" (Note: I blame the "Great Scot!" on my son's superhero addiction.)

I will try it some time when I am brave and sober, and report back here. And when tomatoes are in season--I wouldn't waste my precious green (by which I mostly mean Chartreuse) on tomato juice.

A Ha Ha

2009-02-24T10:47:00.000-08:00

There's no better way to fire the imagination about what I might grown than to write a blog post about what I will grow. One that left out the herb spiral and the rhubarb, no less. As you can see, we're reconsidering our options.

And Charlie's doing his part to mke it a big garden. Today at the supermarket he pulled a "Hey, Mom, look at that!" on me as he snatched several seed packets from a display and tossed them into the cart. Gosh, he reminds me of... me.

New Plan

2009-02-21T08:32:00.000-08:00

Okay, I know I said we'd have a smaller garden this year. But that was before I:

A) rediscovered a sexy heap of gardening supplies in the corner of the basement;
B) started reading The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler; and
C) asked my four year old what he wanted to grow in the garden this year. Turns out he has plenty of ideas.

So here's the new plan. We just put in an order at Salt Spring Seeds for three kinds of tomatoes (Costoluto Genovese, Tibet, and Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter), Winter Party onions, and Royal Chantenay carrots. Charlie's also hell-bent on having broccoli and "salad" in the garden, so I'll buy those seeds locally. We'll have to replace the apple tree in the front yard (@#$% deer; we'll fence it like Gitmo next year). We'll add some berry bushes in the front, expand the squash patch in the back, and probably add some bean climbers at the end of what used to be the driveway, along with the hops.

Is this the final blueprint? Probably not. It's still February. And if last year's experience has any predictive value, we'll end up with an entirely different garden than we plant, anyway. (Spinach self-seeded last year, for instance; who knows what it'll look like in the spring?) The point isn't so much to have a successful garden, though, as to develop the skills necessary for having one in the future. We're just learning as we go along.

Dream Home #5

2009-02-16T19:42:00.000-08:00

This is an off-grid, highly efficient, green designed home that is also, technically, an RV. That I could afford.

And It's made in Canada, no less. Go Canucks!

Market Baby

2009-02-12T08:15:00.000-08:00

Valerie Tanner, president of the Lunenburg Farmer's Market Association, gave me some pictures this morning of my son at the market in his stroller. She took them a couple years ago, but they're just too cute not to share here.

Soupy Sue

2009-02-11T13:42:00.001-08:00

As mentioned previously, I interviewed Sue LeBlanc of Chester Organics over the weekend. I suggested meeting at one. "Great!" she replied. "I'll make lunch." My four year old in tow, I trekked over to icy Otter Point Road outside of the village of Chester to visit her at home.

While our children played together (albeit slightly maniacally), Sue and I had a lovely chat. Our topics ranged from childcare to property values to government grants, but mostly we talked about food. Who's growing it, where to get it, and how to foster the development of a local and sustainable foods market. Her business acumen and focus bowled me over--Sue's the kind of woman who can soothe a child with one hand, balance the books with another, and provide nutritional counseling to her customers all the while.

As we talked, Sue cut onions, ripped kale, broke up some tempeh burgers, sauteed the whole shebang, then added goat's milk to make soup. Then she served it to us. Now, I'm fairly pleased with my kid's diet--he eats more whole foods and "good stuff" than most of his peers--but this seemed like a stretch, even for us.

Charlie stood in front of me and opened his mouth like a baby bird. I spooned in the soup. He swallowed. He contemplated. "Yum," he said, eyes widening. And opened up for more.

I, of course, ran home and bought some kale so I could strike while the iron was hot. It's close to the only green vegetable that's both fresh and local this time of year. Ted Hutten of Hutten Family Farm supplies it (and my carrots, and my potatoes, and my onions...) We made this easy bisque yesterday--not quite as wholesome as Sue's, but equally yummy.

Kale Bisque

Ingredients
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped (I just use my mandoline for this)
1 large bunch kale
1 tsp salt (I like fleur de sel, but any salt will do)
pepper to taste
1 teaspoon chicken bouillon paste (We use Better Than Bouillon from the Lunenburg Country Store
21/2 cups whole milk (We used cow's milk, but goat's milk is a fine substitute)

Directions
Heat the oil in a stockpot over medium heat. Add salt and onions. While the onions begin to sauté, rip the green leaves off the kale in shreds, leaving the ribbing for the compost. Add the shredded kale to the onions and sauté for about ten minutes.
Add the remaining ingredients and turn the heat to high. Simmer for about half an hour, until kale is tender. Turn off the heat and puree with an immersible blender (or, if you don't have one, pour the hot soup into a blender or food processor to puree). Add pepper to taste.

I had planned to add some grated parmesan at this point, but upon tasting I decided the soup was already perfect. Charlie gobbled it right up, and so will you.

February Fresh Food

2009-02-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things about Nova Scotia is the neverending stream of spanky fresh fish. Jimmy, my dealer, meets the boats coming in late at night on Wednesdays. He chums around with the fishermen and honeys away the last haul they brought in before quitting time (and therefore the freshest). Thursday mornings I buy whatever he recommends and make it for lunch.

It's been a couple months since he offered me scallops. In season, they're $7 a pound. This week they were $12 a pound--still a bargain, given their size and quality. This dish, which is both easy and posh, received resounding praise. I serve mine in scallop shells, but they would be delicious in a dixie cup--any container with a rounded edge will do the trick.

The secret ingredient is Sriracha, my favorite condiment. Although Gourmet magazine recently recommended buying Sriracha (also known as "Rooster Sauce" after the graphic on the bottle) from an import company, I recommend checking at your local grocery store--it's actually produced in California, and is widely available in the United States and Canada.

Rooster Scallops

Ingredients:
1 pound fresh scallops, rinsed and dried
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cup white wine
2-3 tablespoons Sriracha, depending on how spicy you think you can take it

Directions:

Heat a cast-iron skillet on a burner set to the highest setting. While the pan is heating up, toss the scallops with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. When the pan is sizzling hot, carefully and quickly introduce the scallops. Pan fry for 2-5 minutes (depending on size). Cut a scallop in half to test for doneness--the interior should be slighly rare but not raw.

Remove scallops from the pan and turn heat to low. Deglaze the pan with wine, then reduce the sauce by about half. Add Sriracha and spoon the sauce over the scallops immediately before serving.

J'ai besoin de Super Marie

2009-02-08T06:21:00.000-08:00

A departure from the usual fare of this blog, but I couldn't resist. This is just so us.

Life Is Not All Cupcakes

2009-02-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

As much fun as it is to sugar up for Valentine's Day, I'm even more excited about Easter carrots.

Things are falling into place beautifully for Brine, my own local and organic food magazine, which is set to debut this summer. Tomorrow I'll be interviewing Sue LeBlanc of Chester Organics. I'll also be speaking with sustainable beef, lamb, and chicken farmer Kevin Veinotte, permaculture activist and Sustenance Gardens farmer BW, heritage breeds farmer Faye Labelle of Silverlane Farm, and--well, the list goes on.

Everyone at the market is excited to develop a resource that will list what's in season when here on the south shore of Nova Scotia, who's selling and where to buy it, easy ways to preserve your produce, and recipes for both the fresh product and the stuff you throw in your freezer. It will practically write itself.

Now... who wants to help me with advertising? ;-)

Happy Sugar Love

2009-02-07T05:51:00.000-08:00

Okay... not local, not organic, and you definitely can't substitute honey in the recipe. But very, very yum. And see how nicely they match my Formica?

Warm My Toes and Think of Spring

2009-02-05T03:18:00.000-08:00

Imbolc's come and gone. The ground is thick with snow, but there's a slender thread of warmth in the breeze off the sea. It's time to start planning the garden.

Thanks to last year's foibles, there's plenty of garlic in the ground already. The hops will dominate the end of the driveway. Deer have made a feast of my beloved Honeycrisp apple sapling, so we'll have to see if it survives and replace it if it doesn't. I want to put in an herb spiral, a little squash in the back corner of the yard, and more raspberry bushes under the front windows. And...

that's it.

A much less ambitious plan than last year, or the year before that, I admit. As I've gotten to know my farmers and developed a sense of what's available locally (happily, just about everything) my DIY ardor has cooled significantly. I'm busy writing about food, perserving food, and cooking food. I want to keep one finger in the dirt, but that's about all I can spare. I'm tempted to rip out the whole lawn and replace it with indigenous wildflowers, but I somehow doubt I'll get around to it.

My neighbor's pesticide-treated lawn on the other hand, is crying out for some guerilla gardening. Better sleep with one eye open, Chuck and Judy Tanner!

(I'm kidding. Really. Maybe.)

A Little Something Something While We Wait for Sunny Days

2009-01-31T06:07:00.000-08:00

January's almost over. I think I'll celebrate with cookies. I dragged this recipe out of my archives for the occasion--

Oreos for Grown-Ups

Ingredients for Cookie
4 tablespoons Kahlua
3 tablespoons instant coffee (or half that amount of instant espresso powder, if you can find it)
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of salt
1/2 lb unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cups packed dark brown sugar

Ingredients for Filling
1 cup heavy cream
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (I like Scharffen-Bergen for this. Of course, I like Scharffen-Bergen for everything.)
A heavy splash of liqueur--you can use Kahlua for consistency, or Amaretto to add a new element of flavor

Directions
Stir Kahlua and instant coffee or espresso together (I call this mixture "happy happy drug paste") and set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, and salt. Beat the butter and sugar together, then add happy happy drug paste and blend. Combine with dry ingredients and stir into a dough. Using plastic wrap to mold the dough, shape it into a log--the circumference of the log should be the shape and size of your final cookies. Wrap the log in plastic and refrigerate at least six hours or overnight.

While the dough is chilling, you may prepare the sandwich filling. Heat the cream to near boiling; then add chocolate and liqueur. Blend over low/medium heat until chocolate is melted. Chill mixture in the refrigerator until the cookies are ready.

To bake, position a rack in the upper third of the oven. Preheat to 350. Grease cookie sheets lightly or use parchment paper. Unwrap your refrigerated dough log and slice thin rounds. Space them an inch apart on the cookie sheet. Bake one sheet at a time until the tops look dry and the edges begin to brown. Cool on a rack.

Once your cookies have cooled down, you can use your filling to make sandwich cookies. These pack a punch at a party--rich, flavorful, sweet (but not too), and a delightfully mature change from the cookies we're used to sharing with our kids!

Read It Here First

2009-01-27T11:12:00.000-08:00

My new piece in ClimateEdu is out. For all you climate lovers out there. ;-)

Memory of Fall

2009-01-27T08:28:00.000-08:00

Fruits of My Labor

2009-01-25T08:01:00.000-08:00

AKA Lesson #126 About Preserving My Own Local, Organic Produce

The strawberries from last summer have been a revelation this month. More specifically, they have revealed that I need to bag a whole big mess of strawberries next summer so I don't run out in January again. The raspberries have also been fabulous. Blueberries, on the other hand, have been a bit... bland. It's not that they don't freeze well so much as that they weren't all that dynamic to begin with. They needed just a little oomph.

So this morning I made oomph for breakfast. It was divine.

Oomph Cobbler

Berry Mixture:
3 pints blueberries (I used half high bush and half wild to add a little extra dimension to the flavor)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
zest of 1 lime
juice from 1/2 lime (save the other half of the lime to add juice to sparkling water for a refreshing morning drink--especially good for hangovers)

Cobbler Dough:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
5 tablespoons cold salted butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup creme fraiche (To make your own creme fraiche: Mix 1 cup heavy cream and 1 tablespoon buttermilk, let sit in warm location 8-12 hours. Ta da!)

Preheat oven to 375 F with a rack set in the lowest third of the oven. Mix the ingredients of the berry mixture and spread in the bottom of an unbuttered pan. Combine the ingredients of the cobbler dough with a pastry blender or knives, then press in a thin layer on top of the berry mixture. Top with a sprinkling of sugar. Bake for 45-50 minutes, then enjoy with unsweeted whipped cream. Perfect for breakfast!

Doing it UU style

2009-01-22T06:13:00.000-08:00

Whoopee! The issue of the Canadian Unitarian for which I am senior writer has finally been published. You can take a look at it here. It was a fun assignment--I especially enjoyed working with William Wuttunee, whose testimony column is on the last page. To quote his bio:

Lawyer, activist, and author William Wuttunee has been a member of the Unitarian Church of Calgary for over forty years. In 1961 he founded and became the first chief of National Indian Council (which became National Indian Brotherhood in 1968 and then Assembly of First Nations in 1982). Currently a member of the Oversight Committee for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, William Wuttunee was listed in the Calgary Herald this spring as 1 of 125 nominees for Greatest Citizen.

On top of that, he's just an all-around dear heart. Getting the chance to speak with interesting, accomplished folks like this is one of my favorite parts of the job.

Will I write more for the Canadian Unitarian in the future? That ball's up in the air. The Canadian Unitarian Council is between executive directors, and how responsibilities for the publication are structured will be the call of the as-yet-unnamed incoming director. So: fingers crossed, breath unheld. In the meantime, thanks again, Bill, for the opportunity to get to know you.

Nigella = Charnushka = Yum

2009-01-21T05:18:00.000-08:00

*le sigh* I must be a trendsetter.

Shortly after writing this post, my Gourmet magazine arrived in the mail. Guess what it featured? A recipe for rye bread with charnushka. (Which they refer to as nigella, but it's the same seed.) Oh well, at least theirs had walnuts. Which reminds me, I found my bread even tastier with half the amount of charnushka, and dried minced onion substituted for the other half.

In other news, big ups to my friend Ania for showing me how to analyze my blog traffic on Statscounter (I directed her to Statscounter in the first place, so it's a fair trade.) Apparently lots of people out there are looking for a chartreuse sauce. I'll have to create another one. Maybe tonight. ;-)

Totally Green, Totally Cool

2009-01-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

I am simply enchanted with this company. They make eco-friendly plantable cards, invitations, and promotional products. (What's more, they're Canadian!) While they specialize in paper with embedded wildflower seeds, I have my fingers and toes crossed that they can make me business cards with herb seeds in them--and if I'm really lucky, rosemary, for remembrance.

Ooh! Which reminds me, I now actually have a name for my business: Greenlance. Considering that I focus largely on clean energy, green home building and renovation, and local/sustainable/organic foods I think it's an excellent fit.

Time to get hustling on my website... I have my little eye on a green designer in Halifax who's currently working up a site for one of my clients, Laughing Whale Coffee (which is organic, free trade, locally roasted, AND something else sexy soon to be announced).

Snow Snacks

2009-01-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

It's a windy, snowy, foggy, day. I can just barely see the Academy on the next hill. The foghorn is omnipresent. It's good to be home.

I've had salt cod soaking in the fridge for two days, so it's time to make a brandade. My recipe puts a Mexican twist on a classic Gourmet recipe:

Brandade
1/2 pound choice-grade skinless boneless salt cod (I get this locally from my fish men, Jimmy and Timmy. Heavy history with cod in Nova Scotia!)
2 large Yukon gold potatoes
1 cup heavy cream
1 head of garlic, crushed
2 dried chiles
2 fresh oregano sprigs
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Baguette (Ours, of course, is from Vendeenne)

Rinse cod well to remove external salt. Cover with cold water by 2 inches in a bowl and soak, chilled, changing water 3 times, about 24 hours.

Peel potatoes and cut into 1-inch pieces. Put in a saucepan with well-salted water to cover by 1 inch. Bring to a boil and simmer potato until very tender, about 15 minutes. (Do not drain until ready to whip.)

While potato is cooking, bring cream to a simmer with garlic, chile, and oregano in a small saucepan, then simmer gently, partially covered, until garlic is tender, about 15 minutes. Discard child and oregano, and purée garlic with cream in a blender until smooth.

Meanwhile, drain cod and transfer to another 2-quart saucepan with water to cover. Bring just to a simmer and remove from heat. (Cod will just flake; do not boil or it will become tough.)

Drain cod and potatoes in a colander and, while still warm, combine in a large bowl with cream mixture. Beat with an electric mixer at low speed until combined well. Add oil in a slow stream, beating, and season with salt and black pepper. Top toasted baguette slices with warm brandade just before serving.

Stock Pot

2009-01-16T10:32:00.000-08:00

It's too cold to go out today, so might as well make the most of it. Thanks to Kurt Wentzell at Wooly Mountain Farms for the organic beef bones--two pots worth for $1.30.

Hoppy

2009-01-14T18:05:00.000-08:00

Everyone in the house has DIY foodie fever lately. I'm obsessing over what to freeze and salt, Charlie has his perfect cookies, and John has... hops.

Or to be more precise, he will have hops. Next summer. Towering over us, if everything goes right. (Note: I said John was growing them, not me. So they probably will actually work out.) At 25 feet, they should give the neighbors something to talk about. We found this fellow selling rhizomes over in the Valley. I smell a field trip.

And yes, we're turning them into beer. What the hell else is there to do with hops?

Fingers and Toes Crossed

2009-01-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

Since its inception, I've dreamed of winning the New Yorker caption contest. Here's my latest entry:

"Order in the court! Order in the--oh hell, forget it."

Back to Basics: Chocolate

2009-01-09T07:55:00.000-08:00

Well, that was a bit of a heavy post. So to balance it, here's my hot new recommendation for all you true chocophiles out there: Snake and Butterfly Chocolate. It's organic, it's live, and it's fabulous. A little bird told me that life doesn't get any better than their cherry and chili bar, so order today!

Breaking News! Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan Have Sex in a Big Pile of Cocaine

2009-01-09T06:49:00.000-08:00

And now that you're reading my blog...

I'm having some Deep Thoughts about sustainability these days. As much as I love the idea of my Dream House, it's pretty unlikely to ever get built. And on the whole, that's a good thing. Because it's a far more sustainable practice to insulate the hell out of an existing structure than to build a new one. My most recent fantasy involves a crappy old house with charming bones that I can wrap with straw bales, plaster with local materials, and hunker down in for a long winter's rest.

The best--and most difficult--thing, imo, about sustainability is that it confronts inequality on all fronts at once. Patriarchy is unsustainable. Racism is unsustainable. Classism is unsustainable. Things aren't looking good for the suffix "ism" at all.

Sustainability is hot on college and university campuses just now, and I'm fascinated to see where this trend goes. Everyone wants to talk the talk, wear a fair trade hemp shirt, and ride the biofuel bus. But when it comes to embracing the big picture.. what will happen to our venerable institutions as we confront the unsustainability of global travel, Western medicine vaccine schedules, and all the beliefs and practices predicated on salvation theology? To bastardize that bumper sticker classic, you cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for the End Times.

We're in for a ride, folks. Buckle in.

Foodie Junior

2009-01-08T08:22:00.000-08:00

Much to my delight, my son Charlie, age four, shares my culinary orientation. To my consternation and mild shame, he's far more of a stickler for detail (and presentation) than I am.

Yesterday we made chocolate chip cookies with his friend Jonas. Jonas, a little more typically, was mostly interested in eating the finished product. Charlie, however, stood attentively by my elbow while I mixed the batter, taking the occasional turn himself. We washed our hands and used them to finish mixing, then balled up portions of cookie dough and put them on the sheet. I merrily shaped and dropped fairly round clumps, just as I've been doing for the past thirty-odd years.

But Charlie inspected my balls of dough, then shook his head in slow sorrow. "We want to make them nice, Mommy," he chided, and carefully reshaped my cookie lumps into perfect spheres, or as near perfect as one can get with sticky cookie dough. "Here, I'll do the rest," he directed, and I stood back while he filled the sheet with meticulous orbs.

We baked. We appreciated. We ate. Then we googled culinary programs for kids. How much of a discount do you think we could get at the CIA if we apply five years in advance?

Foodie Foodie, How and Why

2009-01-06T09:44:00.000-08:00

I'm reading two great books just now. The first, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee is a loaner from the library--although it's at the top of my Gimme list.

I flip through this 884 page tome at the dining room table during meals and snacks, usually to research whatever I'm eating at the time. It's an endless font of fascinating details. In all the writing I've done about coffee (and all the espresso barista-ing I did in my younger days) I never before learned that the foam on a capuccino serves as insulation. The airy bubbles hold in the heat below, allowing you to sip your coffee at temp, at leisure.

Want to know how burning wood creates flavor on the surface of a trout, the etymology of the word "ripe", what the hell lutefisk really is, or what seventeenth century French sauces you can make with the ingredients in your kitchen? Harold McGee's your author.

The second book, Putting Food By by Janet Greene and friends, is the gift I gave myself this holiday season. I'm enjoying its pristine, clean appearance at the moment--it won't stay that way for long. The end all be all of food preservation guides, this book is my new farmer's market shopping companion--so I expect it to pick up both food and dirt stains along the way.

As those of you who have been reading for a while know, I have a strong preference for freezing (because it's... easy! And I have a chest freezer!). My first five minutes with this book revealed an embarassing number of mistakes I made last summer, while simultaneously charging me up for next summer. In addition to my standard dry pack method, Putting Food By has convinced me to give salt preservation a try and...

(drumroll)

...we're seriously considering digging a root cellar. It can double as a guest room for Guests who Go Bad (and you know who you are). ;-)

Dream House

2009-01-05T06:14:00.001-08:00

In my professional work I've been writing about green homes--clean energy, green building and remodelling materials, and (my favorite of all topics) passive solar design. It's fascinating work.

As someone who's always had a weak spot for home design, I can't help but imagine how I'd apply the green design principles I've been learning to my own home. As a child I used to pore over the tanatalizing blueprints of seven-figure apartments in the back of the New York Times Sunday Review; during the deathly boring school week I'd covertly design my own. I'd sit there, sniff a little Elmer's, and get lost in a fantasy of wide wood plank flooring, clerestory windows, and ultra-quiet appliances.

My vision has changed a little since then. For once thing, my dream house isn't in Greenwich Village any more (although I wouldn't say no to a little pied-a-terre). Instead, I imagine myself in the country--close to where I am right now would do just fine. My ideas are coming together a little like this:

I see a home dug in the side of a drumlin with southern exposure in the side of the house, facing the sea. The roof is a green garden, full of edibles, with a large herb spiral dead center.

Inside, the centerpiece of the home is a large, sea blue-tiled pellet-fed kachelofen in the shape of the torso of a Venus figurine, with the fireplace (and pizza oven!) located beneath her navel, in her core. The whole structure is an open floor plan oval with skylights on the darker north side of the interior. Most of the home is single story, but there's a dome above the kachelofen with a built-in tile staircase wrapping around the back of the kachelofen, leading to a conversation pit hollowed in the "head". Several small tubular daylighting holes located around the base of the herb spiral light this area.

The windows, mostly south-facing, are coated on the edges with photovoltaic solar cell dye that supply energy to the house. A polished concrete floor adds to the abundant thermal mass of the home, scattered with thick wool rugs. The walls are a pastiche of tile and limewash.

Everything is quiet. Everything is clean. Everything is green.

Now all I have to do is win the lottery so I can build it. ;-)

New Year, New Tastes

2009-01-04T08:45:00.001-08:00

Yum, I love skinny January. It's giving me an excuse to dig around in the chest freezer and find all the treats I stashed away last summer. Today I brought up a bag of cherries for snacking, asparagus for tonight's dinner, and raspberries for breakfast tomorrow. The winter market opens up again this week, so I'm looking forward to local greenhouse stew vegetables. Time to do a little experimenting with pot barley.

Tomorrow I'll be treating you to a description of my dream house. Until then, I'm going to be lazy and share notes from New Year's Eve (and stolen from my kid's blog):

"I'm going to stay up alllll night," proclaimed Charlie.

"Okay! Sounds like fun," we said.

"I'm going to stay up alllll night," chirped Charlie.

"Hmmm, aren't you a little tired?" we asked, yawning.

"I'm going to stay up alllll night," reiterated Charlie.

"Mmhflagle," we mumbled.

"Is it morning?" asked Charlie.

"Yes! Let's go to bed," we said.

It was 10:30. But next year we're staying up until 11.

Yum Bread

2009-01-02T11:56:00.000-08:00

My friends Amy, Ania and I are all sugar-fasting in January. (Well, my version of sugar fasting includes the occasional pain au chocolat or sweetened coffee if I feel the need--let's call it the French version.)

Anyway, I thought I'd kick it off right with some savory treats. Having just made my mother's limpa for the holidays, I thought a repeat performance might fit the bill. Halfway through proofing the yeast, however, I realized we were out of caraway seeds. The horrors! In an unprecedented act of brilliance, I made a substitution that transformed the old family recipe into something hearty, rich, slightly spicy, and apparently an ancient cure for every medical disorder in the book. Aren't you lucky that I feel like sharing?

Everything Old is New Again Bread

1 package active dry yeast
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons butter, cut up in small pieces
1 1/2 cups hot water
2 1/2 cups rye flour
3 tablespoons charnushka
4 cups white flour

Proof the yeast with 1/4 cup water and brown sugar. The water should be very warm but not hot--you're making a home for the yeast and encouraging it to grow. While the yeast is proofing, blend the molasses, salt, butter, and hot water so that the butter melts. Once it's cooled down a bit, add this mixture to the yeast. Stir in the rye flour and charnushka. Add enough white flour to make a moderately stiff dough.

Knead your little hands off.

Allow the dough to rise in a greased, covered bowl for two hours. Punch the dough down, give it ten minutes to get over the shock, then form it into two circular loaves and let rise another two hours. Bake at 375 for about half an hour. Brush the tops with butter.

Enjoy.

New Year

2009-01-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

We kicked off the new year in a blizzard. A ham omlette, tarte Normande from La Boulangerie Vendeenne, Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, and mimosas chased the blues and cobwebs away.

My resolutions for the new year:

* Publish an edition of Brine, my little local foods mag, each month this summer
* Pitch Gnomes of Lunenburg at Word on the Street in September
* Kick up my heels in Montreal... sometime
* Have fun every day
* Keep on keepin' on

What are yours, dear reader?

Inter-Holiday Fluff

2008-12-30T06:08:00.000-08:00

I stole this material from dh. From his post-it:

IDEA! for dytopic novel

President TRIG 2038-2042
President TRAK 2042-2046
President TRIPP 2046-2052
President TROIG...

Post Christmas Post

2008-12-26T08:54:00.000-08:00

Ahhhhh, Boxing Day is my favorite holiday. It's 2 PM, I'm in pajamas, and that's not going to change until tomorrow.

All kinds of emotional bits and bobs are popping out in the afterparty of that minister post; here's some fluff to keep you kids amused while I get it all sorted.

Cool Shizzah My 4 Year Old Got For The Holidays:

Magic Wand that the house gnomes (Rinky, Dinky and Sly) procured from mermaids for King Charlie

Lace-Up Shoe, Plan Toys

Metal Kaleidescope, Schylling Toys

Natural Skittles Set from Camden Rose

Strength for Superheroes, compliments of the local grocery store

Battery-Free LED Flashlight Eyes Robot

Superman's Space Rocket/Playhouse and Flashlight Eyes Robot Sidekick

I am SO not a minister anymore

2008-12-17T06:48:00.000-08:00

... since so many of you have been asking. I was officially disfellowshipped from the UUMA (Unitarian Universalists Ministers Association) a couple months ago. In typical UUA style, I received a letter that explained I had already been disfellowshipped, since I had not responded to any of their inquiries. (Did I actually receive any such inquiries? No.)

The letter was signed by the same person who, when I once explained that I was not available to commute coast to coast on a regular basis because I had a nursing baby, responded with a horrified, "How long are you planning to do that?" My explanation that I wasn't willing to separate our child from either parent for long stretches of time--regardless of nursing status--seemed to fall on mystified ears.

I framed the letter and hung it next to my certificate of fellowship and my seminary graduation diploma. They all represent important and cherished chapters of my history.

The reasons why I am no longer in ministry are long and complex. It's hard to do them justice in a blog post. Nonetheless, here's the Reader's Digest version:

1. Unitarian Universalists: by and large wonderful people, they are also terrible employers. Our half-assed, ultimately-benefits-no-one version of congregational polity makes for a lot of lost paychecks, inconsistent benefits, and blown contracts. The seminary classmates who don't have horror stories for me of this ilk... are the ones I haven't caught up with lately. Not that my own brief experiences were good. "What do you mean you want dental?"

2. I have found that the quality of energy and care needed for good ministry draws from the exact same pool as the energy and care needed for parenting a small child. I'd much rather put mine into my four-year-old than a group of adults (with a penchant for acting like four-year-olds).

3. I went into ministry in part to live my spiritual journey in an open and intentional way. In recent years I've found that living my own journey out loud is contradictory to the expectations placed upon ministers, which, despite a lot of liberal hype, are really fairly traditional. I got a little tired of deleting the most liberal (and authentic) pieces of my sermons. "Hmmm, better not talk about THAT if I want to be asked back..."

4. Board meetings. Both literally, and as the epitome of the rule-based, justice focused, institutional culture. As my journey has led me deeper into unschooling, consensuality, and relational ethics, I find myself an increasingly poor fit to institutional leadership. I resist the authority conferred upon leaders based not on their personal qualities, but their title. The role of Minister is not a mantle that sits comfortably on my shoulders--that ironic old black robe is anathema to me.

5. When I entered seminary, I wanted to write. I loved to write. I was tremendously excited about the idea of writing a piece nearly every week, having an audience for it, and actually getting paid. Guess what? I'm a freelance writer now. I'm getting paid to write--and sometimes to write what I actually think. While I'm at home with my family.

I still love UUs (and to a lesser extent, UUism). I hope to retain and build church relationships--just not as a minister. I'm eternally grateful that I went to seminary and got as far as I did. And I'm eternally grateful that I quit. Life. It's funny.

Word

2008-12-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

A quick shout out to my girl Ania for her latest piece of flash fiction, published this month at Elimae. It's cool, it's kinky, it's what's happening now.

Holidays Ahoy hoy

2008-12-06T04:15:00.001-08:00

Well, that was fun. I just edited a novel. More of that, please.

In sustainability news, we're getting our Christmas tree today. When you drive over the line into Lunenburg county on the highway, you pass an enormous sign that reads, "Lunenburg County: Christmas Tree Capital Of the World". (Which brings up the obvious question: Can a county really be a capital? Of anything?)

It's true, however, that Christmas trees are a fundamental arm of the local economy, and that it's actually possible here to have a huge, splendiforous, real tree with no environmental guilt whatsoever. Particular thanks due to Kevin Veinotte for his organic, sustainably harvested woodlot.

Usually our biggest problem is finding a tree that's small enough. Most folks around here get as big a tree as they can possibly fit through through the front door. Eight feet tall is a "medium". In the past I've bought the smallest tree on lot (for five dollars), then chopped it in half at home to suit our modest collection of ornaments. This year we're bundling cinnamon sticks in ribbon and baking cookies to decorate and hang, so we can go a bit bigger. We broke down and got a locally made, heavy-duty tree holder.

And so it goes, as Nova Scotia continues to seep its way into my American mind and Western heart. In close, I leave you with a picture of the sleigh cookie my four-year-old made yesterday. (I helped a bit with the frosting placement, but besides that--design and everything--it was all him. He's already more artistic than me.)

True Confessions

2008-11-17T12:55:00.001-08:00

If you know me well, this won't be a surprise.

I'm pretty good at writing about gardening.

I'm lousy at actually... gardening.

Want to know how lousy? I'll lay it on the line for you. Remember, faithful readers, how eloquently I wrote about the varietals of garlic I planted last year? They were beautiful bulbs, satiny and firm, beckoning me with the promise of life.

Key word in that sentence: bulbs. A bulb is something that grows in the ground.

So where did I ever get the idea that new bulbs of garlic would sprout from the... um... top of the plant? I think it dates back to a conversation dp and I had in the spring, in which we both commented that Gosh, garlic you buy at the store sure looks all shiny and new and not like something that came from the ground (seriously)and at the time the tops of our garlic stalks were sprouting things that looked vaguely bulb-y.

The fact that they never developed into bulbs didn't tip me off. Or the fact that other people cut off their scapes. On the contrary, I became more sure that I was correct--but just a bad garlic grower--when the flowering heads developed fruit that looks and tastes exactly like tiny little garlic cloves. I still have several of these rattling around the garlic basket, pretending to compete with the big boys.

It wasn't until last week, when I said, "Look at what's growing in the garlic patch! It looks like cottoned on just in time to prepare the bed for winter. We'll have a lot of garlic next year.

The upside? It's a good thing we're unschoolers. 'Cause without experiential, interested-based learning, my poor child would have gone through life unaware that garlic grows in the ground. (Not really, because he's way smarter than both of us and probably would have corrected my assumptions if I'd asked him--but you know what I mean.)

President Barack Obama

2008-11-04T20:22:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to write it. The race was called at the stroke of midnight Atlantic time. I couldn't breathe, in a good way.

Now, as dp says, "The good cop cycle begins." ;-)

Green Betty Goes Solar

2008-10-28T15:54:00.001-07:00

Working my thing for the National Wildlife Federation...

Thanksgiving

2008-10-16T07:42:00.000-07:00

Although I'm an American by birth, I'm Canadian by choice, marriage, and luck. Enormous luck.

One of the many benefits of living in Canada is Canadian Thanksgiving. The timing is far more sane than American Thanksgiving--instead of having a long, intense holiday month that begins with turkey and ends in an exhausted heap of discarded holiday wrapping paper, Canadians eat their big birds in October. Everyone gets a chance to breathe, get away from their families (and their family disagreements), and generally calm down before revving up for the next round.

On top of that, mid-October is a lovely and logical time for a harvest festival. It's gorgeous out right now. The leaves are brilliant but still mostly on the trees, it's still warm enough for long, lazy strolls, and all the traditional Thanksgiving food are at the height of harvest.

Down to the facts. Here's what we ate:

Turkey from Maplegrove Farms, stuffed with sage, thyme, parsley, and onions from Rumtopf Farm as well as garlic from the backyard, cooked in a clay pot. (Not terribly attractive, but succulent as all get out)

Stuffing made with bread from La Boulangerie Vendeenne, red peppers and mushrooms from Glad Gardens in the valley, sausage from Kurt Wentzell at Wooly Mountain Farm, and chicken stock from one of Sustenance Gardens organic chickens

Gingered puree of buttercup squash (the 'pumpkins' in our back yard that persistently refused to turn orange or get big, whoops)

Mashed potatoes, Rumtopf Farm

A corn and creme fraiche pudding, corn from Glad Garden (Those guys really need to get a website for me to link to! Guess they're too busy building those interesting log greenhouses of theirs)

Cranberry relish--and I actually made my own this year, with local organic cranberries, of course

A baguette from Vendeenne, and

Mama's secret gravy (hint: the secret is a lot of sherry)

Autumn Love

2008-10-04T07:50:00.001-07:00

The Local Joe

2008-09-11T11:41:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite parts of rural Nova Scotia life is the opportunity to get intimate with my food chain. I go to the post office to pick up mail and exchange greetings with Donna, who grew the cilantro for last night's Ginger, Sherry, and Cilantro Scallops. We drive past the cows that will feed us this winter on our way to the grocery store. Just this morning I had a nice chat with Perry Brandt, who produces our honey. (OK, his bees produce it.) His hives were knocked over by hooligans a couple weeks ago but happily, the queens all survived and are buzzing away.

And one of my very favorite local food businesses is Laughing Whale Coffee. Fair trade, organic, and soon-to-be something else sexy that I'm not allowed to give away, Laughing Whale is a glowing example of best practices in a situation where the local meets the imported. Even better, they occasionally give me some free beans. Are they any good? Here's the scoop:

I confess that I approached Laughing Whale’s new Sumatran blend with trepidation. As a connoisseur of fine food and drink, I’ve always felt that I should like dark roasts—yet I rarely do. A history with inferior darks, tinged with bitter or sour notes, has curtailed my exploratory nature. Starbucks, I point the finger of blame chiefly at you. Too many unpalatable cups had led me to think of dark roast as a sort of S&M food --with a cautious exception for the French, who surely must know what they’re doing.

Sue’s Sumatran turned out to be a delightful exception to my dark past. I found it rich and smoky toned while managing to avoid any outright bitterness. This finely attenuated roast was dark but smoothly balanced, and strong, yet gentle on the palate.

My favourite thing, though, about Sue’s Sumatran was its stellar ability to stand alone—no sugar, no cream, no crutch or mediator of any kind. Unlike most coffees, including my household staple grinds, the Sumatran tasted best to me straight up black. It was just me and the cup, poised in a long, calm sip with a clean finish before a headlong plunge into the day. 

Perfecting the Half-Assed Garden

2008-08-23T08:12:00.000-07:00

I accept that I will never have a neat and tidy full-assed garden. It's simply not my style. The thought of getting things in the ground at just the right time in straight little rows makes me break out into hives.

Luckily, there's always more than one way to plant a seed. My backyard is bursting with the most gorgeous squash and tomatoes you'd ever hope to see.

Of course, I didn't plant any squash or tomatoes. Not on purpose, anyway. Last week I took down our tent to pack it up for a camping trip on Prince Edward Island--and behind it, in a narrow alley between the back wall and the pine trees, was a forest of green that had sprouted from a leftover pile of last year's compost. Since I've moved the tent it's blossomed further; squash tentacles adorned with huge, school-bus colored flowers have stretched out nearly five feet into the tent's old footprint.

Conversations with local farmers affirm my suspicions that this is actually a great way to garden: eat local, organic produce and toss the (seedy) scraps in the compost. Spread it out on a likely plot and just see what grows. The best-suited and most vigourous plants will claim the space. Next year, I'm just going to do more of the same and enjoy whatever decides to present itself.

We've been talking about our plans for the unexpected bounty. Between the squash, tomatoes, herbs, and garlic (all four varietals are producing beautifully), I think there will be some serious late summer soupmaking. Watch this space for recipes!