domicile

Bun-Bun

  bunny 
  Originally uploaded by emira

I must say I was rather tickled by the gift I put together for Djuna (my beloved goddaughter) this year. As she gets older my gifts are increasingly for her delight and not just the pleasure of her parents (though of course I adore them as well). I decided to continue on my path of making stuffed toys and used Hilary Lang's pattern for a big footed bunny (the pattern is available in her store here as I liked the idea of a doll that she could "dress up" in different clothes. This may very well have everything to do with the fact that I had a stuffed bunny when I was young that my mom made little knickers for and I loved it to the ends of the earth (and through many mom-patch jobs). Already rather enamoured of the idea of a bunny with a dress, I could hardly contain myself once I decided to also make her a matching dress to wear (photos here).

I received an email from her mom, my dear friend Kate, this morning in my inbox telling me that "Bun Bun" (her name for the bunny) was a hit, and that she and "Bun Bun" went out in their matching dresses and were the object of much oohing and ahhing that night. Hearing that causes my toes to tingle and my heart to leap in my chest. It also brings a sadness that I can't be closer to them all more regularly. Time to plan a trip to Montreal I think.

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?

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Out and About

Internet happenings of note:

• Not Martha makes lasagna in a Baker's Edge pan. I have to admit that pan struck me as too gimicky when I first heard of it, but Megan's selling me on it pretty hard. I'm not sure I could do the non-stick coating though.
• Felicia has conquered the scone!
• Alex got herself an Electra Dutch bike. So pretty. My bike is very close to these in style, but with 21 gears, which is nice as I commute across town. My only regret with my bike is that it doesn't have a skirt guard and so I am constantly tying my skirts up in a bunch to one side to protect them from my spokes. Very unlady-like.
• Beata is taking her eye for lovely fabrics/patterns to new heights of darling with her appliqué design and felted wool.
• And, if you're inspired by the wonderful work of little softies, do visit the new Hand Sewing Wee Wonderfuls group at Flickr. Sigh, how I wish there were more hours in the day.

Culinary Superstitions

Sweet shortcrust pastry
Originally uploaded by emira

My family isn't really the religious type. My grandfather is one of those folks who liked to joke that tennis was his religion (he did play every Sunday morning), and the rest of us can typically only be found at churches for holiday concerts and the occasional wedding. We are however, a superstitious bunch, and I have inherited/carry on most of these myths in my own life. Some out of habit, and I'll admit some with a shadowy fear of retribution from the forces that be. Most of the superstitions are classic old wives tale-garden variety. Things like: no hats on the bed, throw salt over your shoulder, never give anyone an empty purse/bag (always put a penny in it or they will be doomed to bad fortune), etc. Really, compared to some folks I know, I'd say ours are of the pretty secular, west coat variety (many east coasters I know have far more in their arsenal), but my mom has a few that may not quite count as superstitions per se, but that relate directly to the kitchen and their sway over me seems to be strong. More than one of them revolves around pastry, which, given that my mom makes a particularly lovely pastry is perhaps no surprise.

Of course, there's cold hands = warm heart/good pastry, one which my mom repeats anytime anyone congratulates her on her pastry (my mother, is a petite woman with horrible circulation, therefore very cold hands). This is, and always has been, such a common saying of my mothers that I remember as a little girl wondering if I would be gifted with the cold handed pastry skill or be doomed to a life of tough crusts and toasty fingers. The second she didn't really start to haul out until I started making my own pie crusts. I called her from my one bedroom apartment in the big city to complain that my quiche (using the family recipe) just hadn't had the flaky touch that hers does, despite my attempts to keep everything chilled etc. Rather than tell me that good flaky pastry takes practice she asked me if I was stressed out, or hurrying at the time I made it. For, she declared, if you try to rush a pastry or work out your problems through it, it will be tough. As though this was something everyone knew. Since then, I have taken every quiche, tart or pie shell that I have ever made as a measure of my mental health. (Whether or not this is a very good idea). To tough = too much stress. Too crumbly and difficult to work with = tried to hurry/wasn't being mindful of the process. Etc. And today, as I made a pumpkin pie for Miss P's birthday pie (at her special request), today I made what seems to be a perfect pie crust. Of course, I could be jumping the gun here, as it's not yet baked and filled, nor has it been consumed, but damn it came together easily. And it just lay in that pie plate like it was meant to be there. And, so, I did a quick check-in with my self. It's been a hard week -- to many late nights at work -- and frankly this summer has kind of been a bit lackluster at best/trying and exhausting at worst, but Fall is on its way, and for the first time I can remember I'm really looking forward to it. And, this weekend, which has been filled savoury foods, board games, good friends and plenty of birthday goodness feels like it may portent a more relaxing season ahead.

(As a total aside, I really can't say enough about the value of having small pie plates on hand. I went on at length about these two years ago, as I searched for 6" pie plates, but really they're the best. As ours is a small family, I typically make a 9" pie and always seem to have plenty of pastry/filling left over. As a pie lover, throwing out that extra pastry always seemed like such a waste, a 6" pie plate is often small enough to house the leftover bits and filling and then you can throw it unbaked in the freezer to have instant mini-pie another day. And really, does life get better than instant mini-pie? I think not.)