domicile

Tastes Like Flowers

Several summers ago, my beloved yoga teacher and friend introduced me to the delights of a hint of rosewater in a pitcher of cool water as a hot summer thirst quencher. The recipe is quite simple: take one large pitcher of pure water, add a bit of rosewater (say 1-2 tsps per pitcher) and drink. You can also add a bit of fresh lemon, which balances the floral taste and makes for a particularly refreshing drink. This is not a drink for everyone, and I would caution that many folks I have served it to respond by saying, in a non-too-impressed tone: "it tastes like flowers." And they're right. It does. Rather a lot. Like roses in fact. So if that isn't your thing, I'd recommend skipping this one. If it is, however, this is a wonderful and easy way to make a fabulous treat for yourself.

These days, the blossoms are threatening to bloom in our neck of the world and I even saw a patch of daffodils in full bloom on a run the other morning (granted they were next to a south facing wall, but still). Having had a particularly crummy summer last year in these parts, I'm finding myself aching for Spring and already fast fowarding mentally to summer's arrival. I've jump started things and started drinking this rosewater drink while out in the garden planting seeds and digging out weeds. I like to think it helps the flowers along.

While searching for places online to buy culinary rosewater, (I didn't really find any useful ones, so try any Arabic, Greek or Indian market, it comes in bottles for about $5), I came across this awesome  website for the Human Flower Project. The Human Flower Project describes itself as "The Human Flower Project is an international newsgroup, photo album and discussion of how people live through flowers. We report on art, medicine, society, politics, religion, and commerce." Lovely! Read their article on making rosewater in Iran here. Their entire Food category is in fact worth a browse if you're the flower lovin' culinary type.
 

In Praise of Agave Syrup

Heidi Swanson is regularly recommends Agave syrup in her recipes at 101 Cookbooks and in  Super Natural Cooking, and it is a natural sweetener that often comes up in vegan cookbooks (being safe for those vegans who eschew honey). I've never tried using it before, always thinking "well I've got plenty of honey, surely I don't need yet another thing to crowd my baking drawer." However, I'm on a mission to try to recreate the Puffed Wheat Squares of my childhood in a more health friendly format (meaning no corn syrup) and so decided to pick up a bottle of agave syrup at the store this weekend while perusing the baking isle. I've yet to try it in my Puffed Wheat Square adventures, but I can report that it is indeed an awesome pantry addition.

With a milder flavour and much less sweet than the local honeys I buy (or corn syrup for that matter) agave syrup is an excellent and easy way to add a bit of sweetness to a dish. Agave syrup has a much lower sweetness factor, but a really nice flavour to it, and it's very easy to pour/measure and dissolve into things (not nearly as sticky as some sweeteners). And, apparently it has a much lower glycemic index than other sugars. I've used it several times since I bought it now, in tea, in a spicy asian ginger sauce, in a salad dressing and in a tofu marinade. I can see where it would be particularly well suited to sweetening drinks like homemade summer iced teas as it dissolves really easily and isn't an overpowering flavour. There's a great little article about it over at Mighty Foods, along with some links to recipes that use it.  I still need to try it out for my Puffed Wheat Squares and I'm not sure if you can bring it to a rolling boil like you can corn syrup, but when I find out, I'll let you know.

Food for New Braces

  Lemon Souffles 
  Originally uploaded by emira

Miss P is now the proud owner of a new set of braces. Last weekend was my first chance to see them -- Martin and her mom accompanied her to get them earlier in the week -- though I had heard reports of the all-to-familiar mouth pain she was experiencing all week. I personally had a fair bit of orthodontic work in my day. Everything from multiple tooth extractions to headgear (only worn at night) and many years of braces. Knowing first hand just how nasty those first days feel, I decided to make a meal that would be easy for her to enjoy. We had Martin's mom over as well, so I decided that was enough people to try out the Lemon Souffle recipe I'd been eying in my  Modern Classics Book 2 (Donna Hay) cookbook.

Like savoury souffles, this recipe was deceptively easy to make, but very impressive to serve. The trickiest part was a step that I would actually not bother with next time. The recipe suggests you create little parchment paper collars to tie around your small dishes/ramekins which was a bit tricky to do, and took Martin's mom, Miss P and I a fair bit of fussing. In the end, I ended up filling two extra ramekins with less of the souffle mixture and no collars and they didn't overflow, spill, fall or anything. In fact, they came out much more nicely than the ones that had the collars removed (which you can see in the foreground of the shot there). The recipe claimed to make 4 souffles, I ended up with 6 (4 of which were kind of gigantic) and had to throw some of the mix away. So I'd say you could easily reduce this recipe (though it's hard to divide 5 eggs in half) and end up with a suitable amount for 4 people. Also, it was just a bit too sugary for my and Martin's mom (aka MorMor) taste. Though you use fresh lemon juice (and added zest) which makes it very tart, it could still be a bit less sweet. The recipe suggests lowering the sugar and using raspberry pulp or passionfruit pulp instead of lemon juice. I think this recipe could have had 2/3 the sugar or used a combo of lemon juice and raspberry pulp and less sugar as suggested and you'd still have a very tasty dessert.

Beyond the critique what did I (and perhaps most importantly Miss P) think? It was pretty darn tasty. Kind of like a cup full of the meringue off a lemon pie. It would have also been really great with some shaved or curled dark chocolate pieces. It is also gluten free (assuming your cornstarch is gluten free) though really not vegan. It was an awesome excuse to use my KitchenAid (again) and I can't stress how high the easy/impressive quotient is, if you're looking to impress your dinner guests. You do need to do the egg whipping part just before you pop them in the oven, but the rest can be prepared and chilled ahead of time, making it really easy to put together and bake after dinner. The recipe is after the jump.

Gingersnaps, Round Two

  Gingersnaps 
  Originally uploaded by emira

Last Sunday, with great excitement, I made several things with my stunning new KitchenAid. All tasty treats were successful -- including foccacia made with the dough hook -- with one exception: ginger cookies. I love ginger cookies. Be they gingerbread, gingersnaps or molasses ginger cookies. I love'em all. A few years back a very thoughtful and much adored client Fedexed us a box of homemade molasses ginger cookies when we finished her website (how awesome is that?) and included the recipe. They were awesome cookies and I've meant to make them many times. This weekend, with my trusty new mixer I finally got around to it to unfortunately discover that she must have included some wrong measurement as my cookies turned into cookie puddle. Sad.

Tonight I gave it another shot, using a different recipe from the Tassajara Cookbook, which was also a birthday gift. And I have two things to report:

Thing one: Yum.

Thing two: Damn, I love this KitchenAid. It's not like making cookies was a big chore pre-mixer, but now: it's just so darn easy. The whole, "you put the ingredients in, then walk away" is so totally on the money. The easy and elegant power of this little gadget tickle my multi-tasking heart to its core. I can't wait to make xmas treats this year.

The Artful Vegan

One of the other birthday delights I was treated with was a copy of the second Millennium Cookbook, The Artful Vegan. For those who don't know the Millennium Restaurant, it is a vegan gourmet restaurant in San Fran and when it comes to gourmet veggie cuisine they can not be beat. Not in my books anyway. I've had my share of very beautiful, lip-licking tasty vegan/veggie meals made by pros and with the love of darling friends and family, but Millennium is food on a whole new level. Flavours reduced, layered and carefully selected to tantalize your tastebuds and cause those of us veggie foodies to swoon from the toes up with delight. These are meals so flavourful, artful and damn delicious that I defy anyone to feel they are in anyway limited by their lack of animal bits. Seriously.

Their cookbooks do an amazing job of translating the intensity, creativity and art of gourmet veggie cooking. That said, they're not cookbooks for hurried evening, after work cooking or things you want to try out on a day when your self-esteem is feeling a little touch and go. They are recipes for a day when you have all the time in the world to spend in the kitchen preparing, simmering, sneaking tastes and planning for a truly beautiful meal. Conveniently, they're the kind of meals you might feel inspired to make when you have recently acquired some seriously rockin' new kitchen accoutrements like, oh-say a KitchenAid and a Le Creuset pot... For example. (Yes the birthday fairy was very good to me this year).

So now the only task that remains is choosing a recipe... I'm eying up the Gnocchi with roasted beets and walnuts and wondering if throwing some homemade foccacia and german chocolate cake (all requiring the use of the KitchenAid you see) is overdoing it entirely. My dinner guests may need a little help getting out of their chairs after that kind of a carb fest. Still, I'm sure it would be yummy.

Making Dishes

  just some of the afternoon's dishes 
  Originally uploaded by emira

When I'm riding a wave of stress (and have I mentioned lately just how very stressed/busy things are? yes? oh good) things tend to go in two phases. Phase 1: abandon all sense of domesticity, eat out for lunch at work and forage from the fridge/eat out for dinner, cease all laundry habits and let piles of cat hair take up residence in increasingly conspicuous locales. Phase 2: freak out about total lack of domestic comforts, begin to make lists on bus rides/in my head while cycling of foodstuffs that will ground me, gently prod the lovely Martin to vacuum the house and say a silent prayer of thanks when he also tackles the laundry. This weekend Phase 2 began in earnest, and Sunday many, many loads of dishes were washed in our sink as the following items piled up in the fridge/freezer:

• Heidi's life changing lentil burgers. I do not jest. As a vegetarian I have made my share of veggie patties over the years and typically they take a long time to make, require too many ingredients and then fall apart when you cook them. Not these. No sir. They were seriously done before I knew it. Required ingredients which were already in my kitchen and now comprise my lunches for the week, while also leaving me enough to put in the freezer for a few weeks from now when I find myself in a similar time crunch. Oh, and yummy. For the record, these are similar to the garbanzo version in her cookbook, which I can definitely see in my future.


• Also from Heidi's cookbook I had made a batch of the roasted tomato/paprika soup earlier in the week, and at my friend Sarah's suggestion didn't add water to use it as a sauce. I took the remains of that (which for the record I didn't add paprika too), added some fresh sage and popped that into a pyrex freezer dish with some made-by-the-local-Italian-ladies spinach canelloni from my favourite deli to make a canelloni meal to pull out of the freezer and pop in the oven later this week. I whipped up a simple wholewheat breadcrumb/garlic/fresh herb topping thing to go on that too, with some somewhat sacreligious (to Italian cooking purists) hempseed nuts thrown in for extra protein.


• At this point in the day I started roasting some veggies for veggie quesadillas for our dinner that night. The recipe comes from the Rebar Cookbook and includes lemon zest, fresh basil and chipotle pepper with the roasted veggies (actually stirred into the veggies after roasting) which I think is lovely.


• Once the veggies came out of the oven I quickly attempted recreating the tofu sesame snacks they make at Capers (a local organic market) here in town. I've always loved them and consider them a kind of perverse hippy/veggie/healthy person treat to get each time I go. We recently brought some on a beach picnic with Miss P and she adored them and requested them for her lunches. Not wanting to pass up a chance to add something that simple and healthy to her lunches I decided to give it  a whirl, by simply using all the ingredients listed on the deli packaging. Turns out that works. The not-so-secret ingredient? Cumin. In about 15 minutes I had a whole tray of them. Next time I'll make two bricks worth as I couldn't stop Miss P from eating them over the day.


• What next? Ah yes, lemon squares. This was another Miss P request, though since she had mentioned it I had been overwhelmed with a craving myself. I realized I didn't have enough cornstarch as I was finishing up the recipe so used arrowroot powder instead. It didn't seem to set quite right and required extra baking, so the bottom crust ended up a bit tough. Oh well. Still lemony/tasty.


• Somewhere in there I made a pot of lentil soup as well, but looking back I'm honestly not sure how.

And with all that stocked and stored in the fridge, plus some red pepper pesto I taught Martin to make on Saturday night we've now got a fridge/freezer bursting with easy/tasty food so that even my actual time at home is precious, I can feel more grounded (and well fed) while I'm there.

Bitter Sweet

Things are particularly busy around here these days. And frankly, I'm barely holding it together. As I balance what feels like endless demands on my time and brain space I am trying to be particularly conscious of getting some self-care where I can. Whether that means taking a Friday morning off work (to balance out all the late nights and weekends) to do a yoga class (something which has so far been more of a concept than a reality), going to bed at 9 o'clock on the rare days when I have the option, or taking a moment at the end of the day to really enjoy a piece of dark chocolate. That last one has so far been the most regularly practiced indulgence.

I came back to dark chocolate as a semi-regular sweet-tooth indulgence after our trip to Europe last Fall, and continued in earnest with the discovery of Green & Black's Hazelnut and Currant dark chocolate (thanks Annemarie) and then, when Lauren and I visited Texas in the Spring, Alex's introduction of Chocolove's 55% Raspberry Dark Chocolate. I'm what Martin calls a hoarder when it comes to sweets. In particular ones that I adore. And so I have in fact only just finished off my three bars of Chocolove (I stretched them out with a few Green & Black's bars in between), and am now sorely regretting a canceled trip to Seattle where I had planned to restock. To tide me over I finally made a trip to the much lauded Mink Chocolates here in town. I was hoping for a raspberry dark chocolate pairing as it really is my favourite, but it seems hard to find (Green & Black's doesn't make one either) but was out of luck. Instead I got one that sounds so decadent it may in fact send me rushing back to a simple plain chocolate, or perhaps will spoil me forever. Named Mermaid's Choice, it's a 70% cacao, organic dark chocolate bar with burnt caramel, fleur de sel and "a hint of rosemary". Doesn't that sound perfect for savouring?

.

Not Half Bad

  bread a risin' 
  Originally uploaded by emira

Despite record breaking heat this weekend, I followed through with my plan to try making bread. And, while I received many well intentioned warnings from folks here on this site, I stubbornly went ahead with the multigrain recipe that I had. And, you know what? It didn't turn out half bad. In fact, I'd so so far as to say that it turned out totally edible. A bit dense with a thick crust, but totally edible and not a total brick. In fact, I'd say it was pretty decent.

I woke up Sunday morning to make it and ended up preparing my yeast twice, as the first time Martin knocked the bowl disturbing the yeast and I wasn't sure if that would make a difference. Given that I had only invested 15 minutes and a tablespoon of molasses, 2 tsps of yeast and a cup of water I decided to give it another whirl. The heat was likely good for bread rising, though when it came to baking it I had to open all the windows and the front door so the house didn't totally overheat (I'm sure our old gas stove lacks in the thermo-efficiency department, but I tell ya in the winter all you have to do is bake dinner and you don't need the furnace, this is why ovens were always located in the centre of houses). I then set myself up in the front flower bed to try to deal with some serious blackspot on my roses with my kitchen timer beside me, and was still able to enjoy the smell of fresh bread wafting out the front door. Yum.

My oven runs a bit hot, so the bread was done about 15 minutes before the suggested time. I may have even been able to take it out a few minutes earlier to prevent such a hard crust (it's hard but not tough so that's good), though I was worried about uncooked bread. And it isn't too dry, so I don't think I did badly.

I'll definitely try this recipe again next weekend to see if I can improve/change it, but I need the advice of some bread experts out there. I know that when bread dough is ready you're supposed to be able to punch it and bring out a dry fist. I could do that, though this multigrain was a pretty stiff dough (and I'm a weakling) so I wasn't really making a bit dent in it. I kneaded it for about 7 minutes the first time (the instructions said 10) at which point the texture of the dough didn't seem to be changing much except that it was actually getting a bit stickier and less smooth, ie/ sticking to the board where it hadn't before. My final product was a bit "flatter" than I would have liked, I think it could have risen about 20% more than it did. Does that mean I kneaded for too long? Or not enough? All advice is most welcome.

The one thing I've realized is that I don't really know what this bread should be like, which would have been helpful. It is totally possible that I've made the recipe exactly as it is intended and at this point I'm just adapting for my own preferences. There isn't even a photo in the cookbook I used, so I'm really kind of poking around in the dark here. I may try Molly's Honey Gold Oatmeal bread in a few weeks as there's a bit more a description and a photo of the final product there, so I'll know more what I'm aiming for.

My hero and his blow dryer

  My hero and his blow dryer 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

I had heard a lot of things about Armstrong Vinyl tiles before we installed them. Most everyone I spoke to who knew anything about them warned me that, while they are a pretty easy type of flooring to install (true) they are easily screwed up if your not careful. Specifically one must be very sure that you've got the tiles in the right side up before you put the glue down. If you don't look carefully I can see how you can mistake the top from the bottom of the tile and in the chaos of renos it would indeed be very easy to get a few in upside down. "But don't worry," folks told me, "they're pretty easy to pull up." With this bit of advice we were pretty sure we'd avoid any need to pull up tiles by simply paying very close attention. I say we, but really here I mean Martin as the floors were resolutely on his task list during this reno. And he did a great job. A fantastic job. He got all covered in glue and his back hurt each night when he was done, but really he did a fantastic job and didn't screw up anywhere. Sure there a few less than perfect joins back there behind the stove, but with a one tonne stove who is ever going to know but the cat, and really he doesn't mind.

I'll admit, we were pretty smug with the floor installation. No tiles in upside down and exactly two spare red tiles thanks to our ingenious idea to put in black/neutral ones under where the cupboards would be installed. Could things get any better? Turns out yes.

Sunday evening we were all set to go pick Miss P up from a friends place, where she had wisely been escaping the reno all afternoon. With 20 minutes left before we had to leave we decided to move in a few pieces of the Ikea cabinet boxes I had put together earlier in the day to see how things were shaping up. These were cabinet pieces to go over the black floor tiles against the one main wall. We popped on the legs and carefully moved them into the room, watching to make sure we didn't scratch the floor. And what do you know but the black showed out from under the cabinet. AWESOME!

You see, while the measurement of a 25" deep base cabinet is totally correct, meaning that the calculation of two 12" square floor tiles below would be adequately covered by the cabinets is totally correct, if you plan on only ever looking at your kitchen from an aerial view. If you plan on actually approaching your kitchen from a normal human perspective you will see a 2" line of black tiles poking out from under the recess where the toe kicks are below the cabinets. OF COURSE!

With roughly 2 minutes left until we had to go get Miss P and meet a dinner reservation for what was now our gabillionth meal out, I calmly told Martin that I was really "not ok and was probably going to start to cry." He tried courageously to convince me that really it looked fine, but I was having none of it. I knew deep down in my overly priviledged home owning soul that I could not live happily with a 2" strip of black poking out from under one of my walls of cupboards.

I should step back for a moment to try to explain to you just how nasty our old floors were. They were, as we discovered original flooring, dating them at roughly 65 years of age. For 65 years in a high traffic area of a pretty small house they looked awesome. For floors that you wanted to actually appear to look clean after you got down on your hands and knees to scrub them they looked like crap. And, while I may not be the cleaning whiz my mother is, I do like a clean floor. Especially in places like the kitchen, and these floors were just never coming clean. And so it was that one of the primary motivators in our kitchen reno (for me anyway) was really replacing the floor. Perhaps now you'll see why I wasn't so keen on the black line. Perhaps you don't, but trust me at 5:58pm on Sunday evening I felt deeply defeated.

It's amazing how someone you're so close to can sometimes surprise you. Martin often describes his handy skills as "a bit guerrilla" and he's right. He is an absolute visionary who gets determined to execute something and he will often sacrifice detail if it gets in the way of the speedy execution of his vision. Because he builds so many beautiful things for us and our home, I can't really complain about this. Lord knows I'm not going to teach myself to build a dresser or bedframe and if he cuts a few corners in the process, who am I to complain? However, knowing Martin's disposition I assumed he wasn't really going to work with me on my resolute rejection of the black floor peep show. I was wrong.

He asked me to go downstairs and get the blowdryer he uses for tool/handyman type things (for those of you who don't know Martin is a hairdresser so we have no shortage of awesome blowdryers in the house) and he set about heating and peeling up a tile. Fortunately, all the stories about mislaid tiles meant I had heard in fairly intimate detail what the best approach to removing tiles would be. We called Miss P's friend to say were were running a few minutes late and before dinner we pulled out one tile. I had hope.

Now, however, you will recall we had exactly 2 12"x12" tiles left. We needed to pull up and replace 9 tiles due to the 3" overlap problem. When we got home from dinner Martin decided to try scoring the remaining black tiles 3" from the edge and heating and removing only that portion. It worked. He then very carefully cut our two remaining tiles into 4 3" strips and with a bit of shaving and jigsaw puzzling we managed to re-lay all 8 of those pieces. The ninth piece ended up as a hodge podge of tile scraps but that will be almost totally covered by the cupboards. And, while I would love for it to be "more perfect" each time I get down on my hands and knees to really scrub that floor I will remember the way that Martin made absolutely no fuss about getting down there with his blow dryer and fixing that floor for me. For I know that he would indeed have been totally fine with it as it was.

Do We Need to Evacuate the Building?

  the stove, the wrench 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

So where were we? Oh yes, smack dab in the middle of a classic case of renovation hubris. It was Saturday, I had paint on the walls and I could see things unfolding before me beautifully. And, boy was I wrong.

Saturday's set back was not a minor one. I did spend the day painting and prepping walls and then when Martin came home from work we set about moving the appliances back in place. After replacing the stove back to its original position, and rehooking up the gas line from the oven to the main line, we discovered a small gas leak. Though of course it didn't really happen like that. It happened more like this:

We replaced the line using teflon tape and this crazy gas line sealing gunk on each joint just as the friendly fella at Rona showed me the other night. There was mild panic as we had to make a few attempts at lighting the pilot light, but then all seemed fine. We had a gas flame on our stove and I tried to tell myself that was great.Still, I was nervous that something had been dislodged during the whole unattaching process, as it required a lot of twisting and wrenching to take apart in the first place, and those are some old pipes and bolts we've got there. So, to assuage my nerves I ran the gas monitor a few times, the levels were slightly higher than usual, but I reasoned this was from the whole taking a while to light the pilot light scenario. Still, I wasn't satisfied, so I put some soapy water on the joints to check for the bubbles that a leak would indicate. We went about putting furniture back in its proper spots and cleaning up when Miss P came in the room and announced that the kitchen stunk. Both Martin and I turned around. "Really? Stinks like what?" he asked. "Farts," she replied. We both ran over to the gas line. We couldn't see any bubbles but there was a gas smell that was for sure and a sinister hissing was coming from the pipe. As we tried to assess where the leak was coming from (and hoping to all the gods in the pantheon that it was above the shut off valve) Miss P stood behind us repeating: "Do we need to evacuate the building?" like some kind of over eager safety parrot. For the record, this is not a helpful question to be asked aloud as your internal monologue is desperately trying to assess the relative danger of your gas line situation. Two minutes, and 15 "Do we need to evacuate.." later there was a large soap bubble coming off the back of the pipe. We shut off the gas at the valve (for fortunately it was coming from above the shut off) and resigned ourselves to another few days of no coffee in the mornings. I'm very proud of myself for not crying at that point.

We weren't going to pay emergency rates for someone to come fix it on Sunday so we called Monday morning and a lovely fellow came to the house while Martin was here, but he didn't have the right pieces, so he had to reschedule for today.

As I type this that same lovely gas line fellow is here putting a new coded valve on our pipe and reattaching our stove. If all goes well (I can not possibly tell you how superstitious I am about this), we will be able to have coffee at home tomorrow morning and possibly even a home cooked meal this evening (though we'll still be washing our dishes in the bathtub). If that is the case, then I will be the happiest shopper in the food coop this evening, even if I am exhausted.

Sunday brought its own set of problems and delays and they have continued since. I promise to share the delight here as it involves Martin coming to my heroic rescue, but for now I must pay the gas man.

PS: The gas fellow just left and we seem to be in the clear. I feel like cheering from the rooftops. I also feel like a nap. I think I'll settle for a trip to the grocery store to fortify me for tonights attempt at plumbing. Wish us luck!