My mother-in-law has this vegetable garden. I built her some raised beds a few years back. When I say ‘I’ what I mean is there was a crack team involving my brother-in-law who can actually build things and myself, doing a lot of the ‘support’ work. Like hauling seemingly endless yards of dirt.
My mother-in-law fills them with the most amazing collection of produce.
Including Arugula. It grows rather slowly in those boxes we built, but she has lots of room and as a consequence there is plenty to go around. Over the last few days it has been on pizza, in several salads and eaten straight. It has a lovely, soft flavour. What is even more galling, from a fellow gardener’s point of view, is that she has plants that are volunteers from the year before. And that arugula is amazing as well. I struggle to get anything going in my garden.
The produce is nothing like what you would get in a box. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with buying arugula from a store. In fact, I find it incredible that they can pick it, wash it, package it and move it hundreds of miles and it’s still fresh. But I do wonder if they grow a varietal that’s is prone to last, rather than taste good. Or I wonder if sitting in a truck for a few days would take the edge off of pretty much everything.
Regardless, it is amazing how much better it tastes fresh from the garden. I feel very lucky that we have access to it. And to her, too. My mother-in-law is a lovely woman. Her daughter is nice, too.
We have this unwritten rule in our house – if it’s in the garden, you can eat it.
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. If you tear out half of the pea plants getting a pod of peas, you’re going to have to answer to someone. And if you dig up an entire head of lettuce to munch on, one of the adults in the house might have something to say about it.
But that’s really about it. We don’t really have too much in our garden that you can eat this year. We didn’t do sugar snap peas; instead we have sweet peas because the flowers are just so pretty. We have some lettuce in the ground but it’s taking its own sweet time getting going.
There are tomatoes, as well. And, of course, my cucumbers.
These raspberries are from my mother-in-law’s garden, where she grows them, literally, by the bucketful. The kids have always been allowed to go and eat as many as they want. Help yourself.
It isn’t really junk food in the traditional sense. Yes, they probably don’t have much in the way of nutritional value, and yes, they have a bunch of sugar in them… But there is also some fibre in there, somewhere.
But that’s not the point. As far as I’m concerned eating out of a garden is one of life’s most underrated pleasures. The produce always (and I mean ALWAYS) tastes miles better than what you can buy. Aside from water and seeds, it’s free.
And the berries are always so succulent. Sinful, even.
Now, there are a couple of caveats:
Better wear some shoes because it really hurts if you step on a hornet that is grazing on a cherry from the tree. Personal experience in this case.
Better wear some shoes because sometimes bears come through the property and, well, they don’t really spend too much time considering where they might relieve themselves.
Further to this point above, take a good, hard look around when you go to the garden at dawn or dusk, because the only thing worse than getting too close to a bear is getting too close to a surprised bear.
If anyone ruins their dinner because they stuffed themselves with cherries, raspberries and various other garden produce we will let it pass with no small amount of parental pride.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-06-25 14:01:402020-06-25 14:02:51If it’s in the garden, it’s allowed
I’ll bite: How is it that water tastes better in a restaurant?
I went for lunch with an old friend today. We went to Chambar, a downtown restaurant. It was a little strange, with everyone in masks but the food was pretty darn good (more on that later).
To start the meal, our server asked if I wanted some water – still or sparkling. I asked for still and a bottle of this showed up. Check out that label! I’m assuming that in the cooler they have a multitude of bottles – some still, some sparkling and the labels are to tell the two apart when servers are grabbing them in a hurry.
Regardless, I think they’re snazzy.
And I think the water tastes better out of a bottle like this. Strange, but true. I had several glasses. They just kept on bringing more bottles of this wondrous stuff.
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A neighbour of ours, before he started a micro-brewery, farmed a piece of land near Vancouver. His sister, as I recall, was in charge of the garlic, and one day he dropped a bag of scapes off for me. It was rather kind – he also dropped off a piece of horseradish root a while later – that was tasty, too, but the subject of another post. The scape is the flower of the garlic plant and it comes up all of a sudden in late June. Apparently the idea is that you cut the scapes off so as to give more energy to the garlic bulb. cut off the scapes and you get bigger garlic.
Some people just compost theirs, but Steve even gave me a recipe: Ready for it? Chop up the scapes, put them in a food processor with a handful of walnuts, big pinch of salt… run the processor and drizzle in oil until it turns into a paste. Toss with freshly-cooked pasta.
Brilliant. I remember being totally blown away. Three (well, four and five if you count the Parmesan cheese on top) ingredients, plus some pasta.
So supremely easy and so tasty. Every time I see scapes I get hungry – even photos of them from a year ago.
Don’t forget to collect the shells and put them where they belong. No, not there. Yes, there.
Here in Betty’s kitchen there is always something to snack on. It’s pretty dangerous, but when we come to visit, we are allowed to not eat all the pistachios, apparently. I struggle to keep my hands out of the bowl, though.
If I were a younger man, I would be reaching for the muffins in another bowl, but I can resist those these days.
It’s hard being in someone else’s kitchen, especially if you want to cook. I have known my mother-in-law for 25 years and she has always had this kitchen. It underwent a fairly big renovation a few years back but the mixing bowls are still in the same place they have been for ever. And yet, I struggle to remember where they are.
I’m out of place here. The coffee is different, the ingredients are different and in different spots (see above). The Drawer of Requirement is still the same, though. Every kitchen has one of those.
But we have created epic meals here over the years, she and I (and my wife, other family members). I have had a lot of fun and there is a ton of history here, at least for me and I’m sure everyone else in the family.
So I can tolerate (barely, but that’s my inner-snob talking) my mother-in-law’s choice of coffee, and the fact that when she renovated her kitchen she didn’t put in a heated floor so the tile in the wintertime feels like you’re wandering around on 18-inch square blocks of ice. I can also overlook the fact that she has never had a toaster and she uses a toaster-oven to toast bread, which takes forever and regularly sets off the smoke alarms. Don’t get me started on her dull knives or the fact that her non-stick pans are ‘still good’ more than a decade after they stopped being non-stick.
I can tolerate all that (not that it’s much, really – and let’s be honest here – she is perfectly happy with the kitchen the way it is)
It’s easy to tolerate because of that bowl of pistachios. The one that is always on the counter, saying, “welcome”, and “dig in” and “lower right corner, next to the baking pans. How long have I known you? How many hours have you spent in this place?”
The grain elevator in Dorothy is pretty darn cool. Check out those hills in the distance! I was driving by with my brother-in-law a few years back and we just had to pull over to take a photo. As far as I know, it’s still there and in OK shape.
But it brings up a question – one I can’t answer here given my lack of time to write, but one that I’ll pose anyway – how many of us actually know where our food comes from? In this case the grain was taken from the fields right nearby and then stored until the train showed up. Then (I believe) it was brought by truck to the elevator and the conveyor in the elevator would bring the grain up and fill the railcars. At least that’s my understanding. This elevator isn’t for storage – it’s for loading rail cars.
Then it would get moved off to market. There are all kinds of other themes here, too – transport, pooling of product, monocultures, organic farming (or the lack thereof)… The fact that it’s near-impossible to grow just a little bit of wheat and deal with it in any profitable way given the way the modern food markets work…
I took the photo for a number of reasons – namely that it was a really interesting view and I’m always worried that these vestiges will pass quietly away before they can be documented. I didn’t really take any time to think of the actual use of it until I wrote this post. Form following function, but beautiful nonetheless.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-05-26 10:28:582020-05-26 10:32:00Where does this food come from, anyway?
So my mom (hi mom) never cooked with salt. As in, for my entire childhood all of the food I ate was basically unsalted. We had a salt shaker on the table but it was one of those things that was made in the 1920s and in all likelihood the holes weren’t big enough to allow safe passage of most salt crystals. I don’t recall it ever being an issue. I don’t think my mom was trying to keep us from the evil of salt, it’s just that she never grew up with it herself, and she’s rather sensitive to it. It just wasn’t a priority.
In high school my P.E. teacher was joking around one day, talking about sitting in front of the TV, dipping vegetables into a bowl of salt and eating them. I remember going home and trying it out. I was amazed – it tasted incredible, right up until I overdid it. Story of my life, really.
My wife is a huge salt fan – for the last 25 years, everything in my kitchen has taken on new life with a sprinkle of salt. In the ensuing years my mom has let up a bit as well. She has some salt near her stove which she (judiciously) uses here and there.
I can overdo it, though. I remember making dinner for my folks and it was one of those situations where the sum total of all the salty ingredients (feta cheese, olives..) along with my sprinkling of too much of the salty stuff made for a meal that had me reaching for several glasses of water soon afterwards. Even I thought I overdid it on that one. Live and learn.
Mom ate it without comment. That’s love for you. But I knew enough not to repeat that episode. And I did, right up until I didn’t and over salted a steak I was cooking for them a while later. Again, no comment from mom. Still amazes me.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-05-15 15:00:112020-05-15 15:00:12Salt. Simple and yet, so complicated
From the basement of my parents’ house. I think it contained brass rivets by the time I found it
My mother is going to kill me for this.
Well, she’s actually more forgiving than that, thank goodness. One of my major fears is that in writing about my food habits, I’m going to paint her as a poor parent. She certainly had her strengths and weaknesses. We all do. One of her lesser strengths was her cooking.
Her organizational abilities have saved me in the kitchen countless (and I mean countless) times.
But on to ginger, because of course that’s where I’m obviously going.
Lots to unpack. Let’s start with the box in the photo above. It sat in my childhood home on a shelf, filled with brass rivets, I believe. It was there when my folks bought the house in 1974 and I grabbed it when I finally developed a sense of style and I needed something to photograph with my new camera. This was the first thing I photographed on 4×5 film. I did it in black-and-white and in colour, but the BW is not nearly as interesting.
I’m delaying the obvious. Ginger and I have a strange relationship. I never really gave it much thought until one day while eating a stir fry for dinner, I bit into a solid disc of ginger. Rather than grate it or chop it or do anything that would make the ginger smaller, my mom sliced it into rounds and put it into the stirfry as you would drop cordwood on a campfire.
I remember my eyes watering and my mouth being set on fire. I also remember being told that I should watch out for the ginger and that, “prizes will be awarded” – my mom’s way of reminding all of us that there might be unmarked hazards in our dinners.
I didn’t start to use ginger again until a long time after that. I avoided it like the plague. Unlike cilantro, which I grew to love tolerate, I had to unlearn the lesson I learned with ginger.
It also occurred to me many years later, that kids do really seem to have a heightened sense of taste, and that some flavours are a lot more prevalent than others in their young mouths.
Ginger snaps were the first thing I managed to enjoy again. And, of course, the gingerbread my mother made was always welcome. Candied ginger is still on the list of ‘what kind of culinary monster came up with that?’ My mother eats it like popcorn. She does seem to love the flavour.
Ginger, the root, is used regularly in our home now. peeled with a spoon and grated on the finest Microplane grater money can buy.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-05-13 18:09:542020-05-13 18:10:43Ginger, and my childhood obsession with it.
The ‘perfect’ amount of ground espresso – in this case, 18 grams. If only it were right in the middle of the portafilter. *sigh*
I’m still struggling to figure out all the commands in WordPress. Half of the time I get to a spot and have no idea how I got there and, more importantly, no idea how to get back. Stupid program. Why can’t they just make it for my way of thinking? Sheesh.
This is my second post about coffee. I wanted to write something clever about the ‘magic elixir’ or how amazing coffee is. I did write a bunch but it was so hard to figure out the drafts and the revisions I just had to give up and start again.
Right. Where was I? Coffee!
I’ll admit, I really like it, but it has occurred to me that the actual process of making an espresso adds a lot to my enjoyment of the drink. This may be a theme in my life that I’ll possibly explore ad nauseum in days to come, but for the time being, coffee is as much for me about the process as it is about the drink itself.
Perhaps that’s not quite accurate. Coffee is a really fickle pickle, to use a technical term. When people talk about the process they go though when making a cup of joe, coffee is one of the very few food items that demands that level of attention and respect and will reward you for being diligent and careful. Like baking pastries, careful counts.
Many years ago I bought a Rancilio Silvia espresso maker. I used it every day for 7 years and it taught me a ton about coffee. Careful pays off. A grinder is worth the money (to a point). When I moved from the Baratza Virtuoso that wore out after 6 years I switched to the Eureka Silencio. The improvement in the coffee was immediate. I was amazed. All of a sudden I understood why people would blow $1500 on a grinder.
I upgraded to a Rocket not that long ago, but that has more to do with my magpie nature (can’t resist shiny things) and my ability to rationalize many mechanical things (I am a photographer, after all) than it does with coffee.
Besides, getting a great shot out of the Silvia is way harder than the Rocket. The Silvia is a pretty badass machine.
But where I’m trying to go is to say that some things about coffee really matter: The beans, how fresh the grind is, quality of the water as well as the temperature of it will make a big difference in your coffee experience.
If you’re brewing espresso, the amount of coffee in the portafilter (in grams – get yourself a scale – you’ll need it in the kitchen, anyway) how hard you tamp the coffee and how long you run it through the machine also make a big difference in the extraction. The key is 2oz (60ml) of coffee in 25 seconds at the right temperature. Apparently a single-shot portafilter is for people more adept than I.
Naked (bottomless) portafilters, weighing the coffee once it has brewed and snippy comments directed at people who like to drink their coffee with sugar and have it to go are listed under the heading of ‘smoke ’em if you got ’em’.
Although I will admit that the reason why I hate naked portafilters so much is because your espresso technique is shredded by those things. I don’t mind having my inadequacies gently pointed out. I’m not a fan of them making a mess of my clothes.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-05-07 00:15:332020-05-13 18:26:39Coffee – first of many posts about coffee, I expect.
I have Jim Lahey’s book, My Bread as well as Apollonia Poilâne’s book, Poilâne. They are filled with all manner of recipes on how to make bread. Lahey has a bakery in New York; Poilane ships bread all over the planet from France, where they produce it.
My mother made bread every week for years. 8 loaves a week. It was a mixed white/whole wheat loaf, with lots of kneading and a very specific ‘route march’ as she would say. I grew up on it. It was great. But I’m not sure I can ask her for direction on making bread. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I just need to figure it out for myself. Perhaps I know better. I don’t know.
My grandmother was never good at bread. It’s a strange thing to say, given that I would have happily taken a bullet for her. She survived so much – Her name was Frances May Chambers. When she was born, her father was in France, and he was supposed to be home for May. Enough said. The story was that she couldn’t make bread well because she could make great pastry, and the techniques for good pastry (gentle, calm) didn’t translate well into bread (knead, aggressive).
I like to think I’m more like my grandmother than my mother when it comes to baking, and the reason why I struggle with bread is because I excel at pastry. Which is true, except for that last part. My pastry needs work, too. Lots of work.
My pizza dough sometimes works; other times it doesn’t. I use Beddia’s recipe from his book, Pizza Camp. It’s an overnight dough you raise in the fridge. And it’s always at least OK, but it’s rarely great. I have to take it out to rise on the counter for several hours, and I tend to use more yeast than what is called for. When it works, it’s great. But often it’s just… OK. My no-knead bread is coming along, but sourdough starter was a total failure and my most recent sandwich loaf was greeted with the reminder that I have other strengths.
A loaf that actually worked out all right.
Maybe I should talk to mom about bread. Couldn’t hurt.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-05-05 22:53:202020-05-08 19:30:34Bread, part one of probably a zillion
