All 6 seeds germinated. I’m not sure what I’ll do with 6 cucumber plants, aside from have a lot of cucumbers…
My mother-in-law gave us some cucumber seeds. I planted 6 of them, and lo and behold, all 6 have germinated. I was asked to make (and I did) a sort of wooden obelisk (photo to come later, when it isn’t pouring with rain outside) upon which the cucumber plants can grow. The idea is that the cucumbers themselves will be kept out of the dirt and won’t be as likely to be ravaged by slugs and the like.
So, I’ll have lots of cucumbers. Apparently these plants are rather prolific.
And then what? It’s kinda like the proverbial zucchini plant. How do you know your neighbour has a zucchini plant? Well, they’ll arrive on a daily basis with gourds a-plenty. I fear cucumber is the same way, but you can’t grill them on the barbecue, you can’t make muffins or loaf out of them…
Pickles? Gherkins? Lots of salads? Not really sure what I’ll do if I have an embarrassment of cucumber riches, but I’ll deal with that if and when it happens. Currently, they’re about an inch high, so I best not get ahead of myself.
I finally managed to make a decent dough for my pizza. Took a few tries to get it right. A friend of mine told me to write this down. Few thoughts:
The recipe often leaves things out. I remember chatting with a friend not that long ago and she commented that the biggest problem that chefs have with cookbooks is trying to make their recipes work for the home cook. It’s easy to do a pizza dough if you’re making 100 pies. Lot harder if you’re making 2 and trying to describe a process that you do every single day by memory into a few lines that the home cook can pick up and understand.
But here’s the trick: You have to proof the yeast. The dough I was making is an overnight in the fridge slow-rise dough and I had trouble getting a good rise ever since I started using this recipe. Sometimes it worked better than others, but generally it was pretty unimpressive. The recipe called for traditional yeast but neglected to remind you to let the yeast proof before you mix the whole works together.
What is proofing? Well, you need to make it active in water before you continue the recipe. Often it takes quite some time. Like 10 minutes or so. As in, mix water, sugar, yeast, oil together and then let it sit until you see activity. In my case it looked like someone was stirring the water, but the water was still.
At that point I mixed everything together and hey-presto, it worked like a charm. It rose overnight in the fridge and it rolled out and make a superior pie.
It was lucky, but it was also the product of making the dough at least a dozen times – including a particularly disastrous situation with the in-laws where the dough didn’t rise at all. Still tasted pretty good, and I wasn’t asking for the youngest daughter’s hand in marriage (thankfully that happened more than two decades previously) but still it was a bit embarrassing. Won’t let that happen again.
I had this brilliant post all laid out in my mind. This dress photo was going to be an analogy to what I was trying to say, and darn it, I can’t remember what I was going to say. I don’t think I was going to be talking about ‘always a bridesmaid’, because I generally don’t go for those analogies – it makes me look rather clueless and goodness knows we don’t need any more of that.
Maybe it was about the idea that things always look better when they’re behind glass. Print a photo. Put it in a frame behind glass and it takes on a certain gravitas that is noteworthy and amazing. It’s so simple and yet so effective.
Further to that, there is also something about things being just out of reach. Maybe I wanted to talk about how we often feel that recipe is just a little too hard, or where the hell do you get yeast flakes, anyway? Aside from Amazon, of course. Maybe the challenge of creating a meal – any meal – is overshadowed by the issues that surround it. Some personal, some systemic (time, ingredients, lack of an industrial deep fryer…)
I cook because in some cases I feel like I can’t not cook. It’s one of the few aspects of my life where I can’t not do it. But that doesn’t mean it comes easily to me. It doesn’t mean that I can conjure up things to eat out of thin air. I’m the worst for that. My wife is far better than I (in all aspects, but specifically here) when it comes to pulling together meals.
But the kids do need to be fed. And so do we, for that matter. Some sort of ‘healthy’ food. Regularly. Several times a day, in fact.
It’s hard to do, but the fact that it might appear to be behind some glass and unattainable is just a ruse. We can all do this, maybe not at the same level but that’s hardly the point. We all gotta eat, and we all have to play the hand we have been dealt.
Like every wedding it’s a lot more fun for the attendees than it is for the ones being married. Those dresses aren’t that comfortable, anyway. Better to have fun than to play by all the rules.
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.pngAlastair2020-05-22 11:46:472020-05-22 11:46:48I can’t remember what I was going to say
Not that it’s that earth-shattering. I live in Canada and dontcrowdthepan.com was already taken. But the link to the .com version of the title doesn’t get you anywhere. Maybe it’ll come up at some point. Maybe not. I’m not going to spend too much time worrying about the .com aspect of the site.
The saying comes from the idea that if you’re browning a piece of food in a pan and if you pack in too many pieces of food too close together (crowd the pan) then you won’t get good browning on the food. I’m not sure what the rationale is for this – scientifically – but it’s true. Happens to me all the time.
There is a bit more to it than that, though. I really struggle with getting good browning on my food when I’m cooking it. Maybe I’m too impatient. Maybe I pack in too many pieces of food in the pan. Maybe the pan isn’t hot enough. Maybe it just isn’t a priority.
It’s a simple thing to remember, but really hard to do in practice.
No one ever complains, either. If I don’t crowd the pan it’s for my benefit, not for my family. As long as I can get something on the table – that’s the priority.
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.pngAlastair2020-05-21 11:17:082020-05-21 11:17:09Guess I should talk about the title of this blog
You can tell it’s organic because of the grass below the trees. In a ‘regular’ orchard the grass doesn’t grow because they put down some sort of pesticide to kill it. Not sure why they even bother.
Organic food is something I don’t know much about – of course, that never really slowed me down in terms of making comments. I don’t go out of my way to buy organic unless it is bananas which, for some reason unknown to me, always seem to last longer and taste better.
Here are a few issues with organic: One, the grocery store (nearby me, independent, they have local produce unlike the Safeway not too much further away that brings in produce based on their supply chains in the USA. We get cranberries from Massachusetts. We have some of the largest cranberry bogs in North America about a 40-minute drive from my house. Yeah) …anyway, my local grocer – has organic produce but because they fear that people will try to pass it off as non-organic and pay the lower prices – have it wrapped in all kinds of plastic and labels.
I would sooner eat food from a non-organic farm or not at all than have to deal with the sort of packaging they put on that stuff. It’s organic, but it’s also encased in plastic. Kind of ironic, really.
Generally, I like local, fresh, and recognizable produce. Seasonal is nice, too. Raspberries in January are going to be expensive and unimpressive, no matter how cool it is to see them in the store. How they grow them, pick them, package them, fly them from Bolivia to Vancouver, drive them to the grocery store, stock them, and mark them up for less than a zillion dollars a pint is beyond me. But I ask the same questions about Australian wine.
Back to organic. I have had great organic produce. I have had some really forgettable organic food, too. I just wish I understood it better.
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.pngAlastair2020-05-19 21:44:232020-05-19 21:50:38Organics. The organic orchards do look pretty…
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
There isn’t really much about this photo that relates to food. Nothing at all, in fact. I shot this on my first morning in Havana. I was there with my dad. He wanted to see the Panama Canal and when I looked around to see where else we could go (nothing personal, Panama, but aside from beaches there wasn’t much to see in Panama except the Canal) I noticed Cuba wasn’t too far away.
I’m from Canada, so going to Cuba is no big deal. We flew from Toronto to Havana, stayed for a few days; flew to Panama, saw the Canal, came back to Havana and stayed a few more days and then went home. Great trip.
This is (ostensibly) a food blog. So, I guess I better talk about the food. Actually, first I’ll mention that this shot was taken with a Fujifilm x100 and I have a good friend who has a couple of Studebakers. I saw this, thought of Steve and snapped away.
Right, food. Cuban food was actually (in 2012) much better than I expected. With the exception of one meal where my chicken skewer was totally undercooked we had routinely pretty tasty food. From breakfast in the Casa Particulaire (thanks, again, Maura) to dinner at the Cafe Florida where there is a statue of Hemingway holding up one end of the bar, the food was pretty good. Sometimes marginal, often good and a couple of times, great.
When I was researching our trip I read again and again how awful the food was. I guess it all depends on your point of view. The food in Cuba was actually better than the food in Russia, but there might be a few reasons for that one.
I wasn’t expecting much, really. And I was more than adequately rewarded and surprisingly impressed.
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.
Soooo looking forward to having a few of these next month .
I eat these things like popcorn. Aside from stained fingers, there is little downside to enjoying a few cherries. You get to spit out seeds across the backyard, they taste great, you can look them over pretty carefully so you don’t end up with one that might be a bit, uh, off…
But there’s more: They are generally the first fruit that comes out in my neck of the woods. There is something I just love about the concept of local fresh fruit – as opposed to wooden strawberries from some spot several time zones away – and, of course, they’re tremendously photogenic.
Getting a bit existential for a moment, does a bowl of cherries signify anything more than just a great snack? I can’t think of anything biblical regarding cherries, and they certainly haven’t been involved as a flashpoint for any international conflicts, as far as I remember. They also didn’t kick over a lantern and burn down a city.
And yet I can’t help that in eating these guys there is something I should feel guilty about – further to yesterday’s comments on the article that suggested that telling everyone how great your sourdough bread is is actually a form of snobbishness and social exclusion.
I don’t want to exclude anyone. I want to eat my cherries. Is it possible to strip politics out of writing about food? I’m not sure it is.
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.pngAlastair2020-05-12 18:28:422020-05-12 18:29:19Bowl of Cherries
In the Saturday Globe and Mail, Mark Kingwell wrote an article about how the bread making craze is a way for snobbery to manifest itself. I’m not entirely sure I’m getting this right. I have read the article many times but it’s a bit above me. And I have a degree in Art History. And I read all the time.
Basically, Kingwell sees the creation of all these sourdough loafs that are immortalized on social media as a manifestation of the snob class.
He says:
To be clear, I”m not really interested in the bread part of this equation. I have eaten bread from bakeries large and small, and also baked bread myself sometimes and eaten that. Bread is a great human achievement, sure. But like every aspect of everyday life it is also a pwn in a larger chess game of status.
Ok.
I guess.
He also says:
Well, go ahead and bake bread. But your homemade toast is a boast, and the food posts are a judgement, a declaration of authenticity. Also – here’s the kicker – so is the act of claiming that they aren’t. In fact, that last move is the ultimate attempt to leapfrog into meta-boasting and meta-judging.
Uh. What is meta-boasting? You know you’re in trouble with words like that when Duck Duck Go returns travel in Meta, Italy as the first response to that search query. And you’re in even deeper trouble if this article itself is the first non-Italian option as to what meta-boasting is.
I struggle with academic articles like this because I’m not entirely sure I’m being told off, but I do get the distinct impression that by sharing my bread photos I’m one of those nauseating, smug, baker-people. Judgemental and snobbish.
Here’s my take. I like bread. A lot. I think the whole notion of baking bread is brilliant, and I want to share. I especially want to share my successes, but I’m happy to share my failures, too. (although those last couple of loafs of sandwich bread will never see the light of day as long as I’m alive. God, those were awful.)
I get frustrated when I’m told that when I’m saying, “Hey, this worked!! Who knew?” I’m actually virtue signalling in some way. Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but I just don’t think so.
If I am, I apologize. And I plead by case by offering my usual defence: Cluelessness. I apologize if I’m being obnoxious, but I need someone to be a little more specific than this to guide me to being a better person. (Oh, the irony).
I comfort myself by knowing that when I tried to make a sourdough starter it was a dismal failure. The bread I bake is currently with yeast only. So, technically, given that Kingwell was talking about sourdough bread, I’m free to do as I please.
I’ll try sourdough again in a little while. When this all blows over.
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.pngAlastair2020-05-11 18:11:462020-05-12 18:01:06Homemade bread as a marker of social status – discuss.
