domicile

Pinto Progress

pinto beans
Originally uploaded by emira.

Back at the end of June I was pretty darned excited about the prospect of growing some hard beans in my back yard. I was excited about this for two reasons: first, new gardening experiment = fun; and second, the idea of being able to actually grow a source of protein within the confines of the land the city lets me claim as my own was just too exciting. Particularly as a vegetarian, the idea of growing a near complete meal (really I'd need a complex grain to accompany those pintos) just outside my kitchen window seemed like good fun. I've also been increasingly suspicious about how few varieties of beans I can actually lay my hands on at the grocery stores here in Vancouver. Over the years, as a diligent vegetarian and somewhat of a foodie, I've picked up my fair share of cookbooks on the topics of beans and I find that with many of the older ones (like pre 80s) or British editions there are very casual references to a whole host of beans that I just don't see in the standard dried good isles of even bulk and specialty shops here. So, I figured, if I could successfully get these pintos going, then perhaps I could start searching out some heritage beans and growing and storing some crops of hard beans for our culinary pleasure.

How are the pintos doing? Pretty well I'd say. They've started to take over the hose and climb up it, which is fine by me. I planted nine beans which yeilded me nine plants, and they're full of wee pods now. Really I should have planted these much earlier, but didn't get them from my friend until the very edge of the season for planting. If the weather holds they should have enough time to mature for storing, if not, we may be eating some fresh pintos. But either way I'd say I feel pretty confident that I've got what it takes for some hard bean production for next year. So I may need to put in a few extra beds to grow enough for harvesting, but I definitely plan to do some research into getting some more unusual beans for growing/storing.

(Cross posted at The Dirt.)

I Heart Lunapads

For those who know me in the real live flesh it will come as no surprise to see the Lunapads.com banner that has shown up on the left side column of this here blog as of today. The gals at Lunapads are not only my clients, mentors, and friends but their product is really and truly my number one favorite menstrual product of choice. Yes that's right, I said menstrual product. Of choice. It's true, we're in to modern furniture, chic urban design, bike riding, organic gardening, fine wines and alternative menstrual products here at domicile (well I am in particular though Martin does often give his hearty approval when I wear my Lunapanties).

If you're someone who has a period and you've never thought about alternative menstrual products before, I do urge you to give them a ponder. If you find that your ick radar is going into overdrive right now, I urge you to calm right down. Seriously. And if you feel you need some help getting over your urge to click away from this post, I encourage you to take a look at this article I wrote oh so many years ago now titled: 8 Myths About Washable Menstrual Pads. If you're already a fan of Lunapads, washable pads, Sea Sponges or the DivaCup then high thee hence to this page to pick up your own blog button. Lunapads will be so very touched that you did that they'll send you a surprise gift pack. That's right, a free in the mail surprise gift pack. What could be better than that?

Kindred List Fan

  tomato! 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

Have you read Orangette yet? I highly recommend that you do. I became enamoured back at her post about Blueberry Buckwheat Bundt Cake and leftover pancakes (I also keep a stash of these in the freezer). I went back for her recipe for Zucchini Blossom Pasta a few weeks ago when zucchini flowers were all over the farmer's market. But it was her recent post about list making/tomato tart that confirmed that we share a similar approach to culinary life and not just a common affection for some of the same flavours. Here's an excerpt, which I know will give my friend Tracey a giggle if she reads it:

"But my favorite variation on the theme, my pet list, is a messy Post-It that sticks in my agenda. It is the nerve center, the motherboard, the county seat. It is my list of what to cook. ...  And if there’s one thing better than a delicious meal, it’s got to be a delicious meal that lets you check something off the list."

Not only do I share her love of serial list making (I myself have a similar post-it stashed away, as well as one for xmas and birthday gift ideas for various friends/family members, one for movies to rent the  next time I'm sick, one for books to read, sewing patterns to one day sew, and really that's just a small sample of the permanent lists that live in my agenda), but right now I share a bounty of backyard tomatoes. And so, I plan to take a crack at this lovely looking tart (it is now on the list!) though may try to do something with it that will avoid the dairy... we'll see.

Calling Vancouver Craftsters

A group organizing a Fall Craft Bazaar here in Vancouver is looking for table applications. Details and info about submitting your application for a table are here. Looks like some fun times.

Garden Soup

  Garden Soup Ingredients
  Originally uploaded by emira.

I woke up feeling quite wretched and overworn this morning and on the verge of coming down with some sort of unwelcome summer flu. And while I was feeling far too off kilter to even think about eating breakfast until well afternoon, I woke up with the very comforting memory of a simple cup of soup I had enjoyed last night over dinner with Kate, one of my dearest friends who is in BC visiting from Montreal.

The soup was quite simple. It was the evening's special at a little restaurant in James Bay (Victoria, BC), and happened to be vegetarian making it appealing for me. Kate had been feeling like she was fighting a cold and so inspite of the rather gorgeously sunny day we both began our meal with a cup of the "Gypsy" soup. Kate seems to recall a similar recipe in one of the Moosewood Cookbooks, though it isn't in either of the ones I own. It was a tomato and veggie broth, with large chunks of summer fresh veggies, seasoned with a chipotle puree. Quite simple really, and I didn't necessarily think much of it last night, but today as I battled it out with this feeling of being under the weather it was all I could think of.

And so on a lovely hot summery afternoon I managed to get the kitchen into an absolute swelter while I simmered a large pot of my attempt at recreating the Gypsy Soup, and because nearly every ingredient came from the backyard, I've now dubbed it Garden Soup. I'm afraid I'm hopeless with making note of amounts of anything that I use, so while I will share the ingredients with you, I'll have to leave it up to you to figure out measurements. I accompanied mine with a loaf of a garlic and fresh herb beer bread, using (which was exactly that easy), which made a wonderful companion to the soup though the additional kitchen swelter was quite unlivable and I ended up eating my dinner in the breeze of the front porch as the evening set in.

Recipe for Domicile's Garden Soup (Late Summer Edition)

I began by making a simple veggie stock with some vegetables from the garden and farmer's market that languished in the fridge last week during a particularly busy week. Once that was done I headed out back to see what I could pull in for soup and returned with a bowl full of:

Yellow cherry tomatoes (maybe a dozen);
Six regular/largish tomatoes (mine were Early Girl variety);
A mixing bowl full of very large purple peacock beans that have become a bit too woody for steaming and a handful of green and yellow beans from my bush bean plants;
A bunch of lacinato kale leaves, to which I also later added a handful of green chard;
Four beets; and,
Three small onions.

To this I added about four or five cloves of garlic from the farmer's market and about six carrots and six red new potatoes also from the market.

Then everything got chopped up to soup size. Which today was pretty chunky.

I got out my large soup pot and sauteed the garlic and onions with two bay leaves (which I happen to get from my grandma's garden) and a generous pinch of sea salt in olive oil (enough to cover the bottom of the pot). When those were soft I added the potatoes, five minutes later the beats and carrots, and five minutes after that the beans. Then I put the tomatoes (all roughly chopped) in and added enough stock to cover everything. I ground in some fresh pepper and added about a tablespoon of chipotle puree and let it all simmer for an hour or so. When I came back to taste it I decided it needed some more salt (I don't put any salt in my stock though) and a little something else, which I decided would be about a tablespoon of freshly chopped sage. At that point I also added the chopped kale and chard. About 30 minutes later I had a bit bowl of soup with the still warm beer bread and am now convinced that with a good night's sleep I'll beat whatever this bug is that's trying to steal the end of my summer.

The Princess Bed

  P is for Princess 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

In actual fact this isn't really a princess bed. Well, it kind of is, as it is a bed custom made by one very special nine year old (almost 10!) several years back now by her adoring daddy. It come equipped with a canopy and her initial carved into a heart on the headboard. For the past few years, while Martin moved around a bit before we bought this place, the bed was stored at his folks place and this summer it has come out of storage to live at our house.

The bed is a much better fit for the wee girl's room, and goes just fantastically with her bubblegum pink walls, especially with the new lime green quilt cover.  The project of finding a new home for the double bed that was in here has spawned some much needed basement tidying, and what I think will eventually be some very satisfying minor renovations of the downstairs rooms, which is nice, as left to our own devices we would likely have ignored those for a long time and the more useful we make them, well the more useful space we have in our fairly modestly sized house.

We were spurred onto this by the need to move the bed out of storage as Martin's mom looks at moving out of the big home she shared with his dad, and possibly finding herself something smaller. And I think we both wanted to do a particularly good job of setting it all up quickly for Martin's daughter as she did a typical kid thing and managed to break her arm in two a few weeks ago while on a family camping trip with her mom. The break resulted in a trip to the hospital for surgery on the long weekend, and I think a fair bit of stress and anxiety for all the adults involved who haven't really had the best of summers so far. She was by all accounts very brave and has reported out that "surgery isn't so bad, you don't feel anything." But, still a cast, a broken arm and summer just don't mix. No swimming. No waterslides. No more rollercoaster or bicycles. Generally a big drag.

Having gone to some somewhat clumsy feats to complete this post, I feel like it is worth mentioning that I do go out of my way not to mention Martin's daugther's name publicly here. While really our anonymity is far from protected with this web site (and the many web sites and acitivities I'm involved with online) I do feel that as a person coming of age in the web generation and about to enter into teenhood etc. that she deserves some semblence of privacy or at least cloaking from the Google search potential high school crushes might perform to find out more about her. And, particulary given that while she is now a part of my family she is not in fact my own daughter, I feel some responsibility to honour her privacy, so my apologies if it makes the narrative a bit stilted sometimes.

Project: Come Stay At Our House!

  Guest room sans ceiling tile 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

Ah yes. So, back a few weeks ago we began an evening project to set up Martin's daughter's special bed in her room. This was a fairly straightforward undertaking except that it required finding a place to put the double bed currently being used as her bed, which then lead to some painting of the downstairs bathroom somewhat inexplicably and the total overhaul of the downstairs bedroom. How it all happened I'm not quite sure, but here's where we're currently at: drywall.

Our house is billed by real estate agents and their ilk as a four bedroom. Everytime I tell people that I actually have to mentally review what the most outrageous number of bedrooms that one might claim our house had and then kind of double check. Four. Huh. So that's our bedroom: reasonable size, tiny closet. Fine. Martin's daughter's room: barely fit a double bed, better with the twin, tiny closet. Ok. Then the back study which just fits a small computer desk, some built in wall shelves and a kind of make-shift closet. This room also once held a playpen for a night, which marks the only time we've tried to stretch its capacity as a "bedroom" and that was for a 14 month old. Then there's the basement room which we had been using as a sewingroom, which in actual fact just held a bunch of sewing stuff but was never really used. Why? Because it was really basement-y. Wood panelled walls that made you feel like you were in someone's musty old cabin, little light and nasty falling down ceiling tiles, plus the whole in the basement thing all conspired to make it not really the kind of room  you would want to ever think about sleeping in. But. But! We will change all that. Yes we will.

Ok, so we can't change the in the basement part, and while removing the very nasty homemade window sconce-y thing does help let marginally more light in, well it's still a basement room. But, I painted it white which is arguably painfully unoriginal, but it was on sale (really sale paint!) and it goes a long way to making it feel less like a creepy cabin in the woods. And now, we've moved onto the ceiling. We spent a while trying to think of cheap ways to redo the ceiling tile while not having to actually build a proper ceiling and then we remembered that drywall is actually pretty cheap. Especially if you have a handy and ambitious Martin-like fellow around who feels like drywalling. So, for $45 in drywall and $10 in mud (plus tape and screws left over from the bathroom) we've now got all the components for a bedroom ceiling. Huzzah! Fortunately this drywall business is resting firmly in Martin's realm of expertise and I'm just trying to ignore the very real possibility of drywall dust infiltration.

Pick a Peck of Pickles

  Pickles by the Jar 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

Homemade pickles are a hot commodity in our house. Ever since my friend Sarah introduced me to the delight that is a good homemade pickle, and I in turn introduced Martin we have become a household full of pickle connoisseurs. Sadly, our combined pickle adoration also results in the odd bought of relationship friction, for I am of the type that savours delights and stashes them away for rainy day pickle enjoyment, while Martin is of the "yum, yum, gimme some" school of indulgence. As such, around May or June as the jars of reserve pickles from last season begin to really dwindle some anxiety about rationing until this year's pickling season builds.

This year, in addition to doing my regular scrub and process of roughly 20 lbs of cucumbers into happily jarred pickles with Sarah, I'd also planned to supplement the domicile pickle stash with homegrown cukes. However, as this is my first year growing pickling cucumbers I hadn't really planned on a staggered harvest. You see, typically, Sarah and I plan an afternoon or evening of factory pickling whereby focused attention in put on jarring up a sizeable sum of cucumbers, so the idea of harvesting 8 or 10 cucumbers to jar at a time wasn't really in my frame of reference. However, as the season has gone on it has become clear that my cucumber plants have no intention of suddenly bursting forth with 10 lbs of fruit, but intend to keep up their steady pace of producing what amounts to roughly one or two one litre jars at a time. So tonight I did my first two jar pickle, and it wasn't so bad. In fact, it was quite pleasant. Much lower stress than creating a system whereby two dozen jars can be sterlized, gallons of vinegar can be boiled and several heads of garlic peeled and prepped. And that's not even touching on the scrubbing of 20lbs of cucumbers. No, this was quite civilized. Boil up a bit of vinegar/water/salt mixture. Sterlize two jars. Scrub a couple of cukes and away you go. I also tried something else a bit new this time -- we'll see how it turned out -- in that I cut up the cucumbers into spears. You see I had let a few of the cucumbers get a bit too big over the weekend while we were away, and they would have only fit two to a jar with way too much space around them for proper pickling procedure, so I opted for cutting them. I know that there's a brand of kosher dills that does this so in theory it's a viable pickle option. And if they aren't quite right, I'm sure Martin will still eat them.

Shameless Consumption

If I had the money and the lack of conscience to ditch a perfectly good front-loader, energy efficient washer and dryer for a new one, I'm afraid I would instantly succumb to these LG cuties. Delightful! The universe -- or more correctly the industrial manufacturing complex -- should certainly design more high-femme appliances. I decree it!

Though I can't help but imagine that these beauties will quickly become the avocado green and harvest gold appliances of our own age.

I Heart Pattern Review!

  muslin from the front 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

Oh my goodness. Megan led me down the garden path to Pattern Review with her recent ReadyMade posting, and I could not be more thrilled with this sewing-geek resource. To quote Megan:

Pattern Review is a community of users who review patterns, sewing machines, books, notions and fabric shops. They even offer online sewing lessons and tips. The site was started by Deepika when she couldn’t find a web site that would help her decide what sewing patterns were the best to buy. Note: You might need to create an account, it’s free, to view some older reviews.

I've created an account for myself and can see that most folks agree with my assessment that the Amy Butler Cabo Halter is indeed an easy and satisfying sew. And having now had a look at reviews of the Amy Butler Cafe Apron, I'm further convinced that it is indeed a daunting task, but that the results are well worth it. Most of the reviewers said that it was the ideal pattern for a gift for a special someone, which is exactly what I had in mind for it. I had been planning on making it for up to two people for the holidays, so if I want to even consider that, I think I need to get cracking.

Back to Pattern Review, I'm so thrilled to find this resource. Thanks Megan!