#yegfood – Make me eat my words.

Winter window gardens

February 5, 2017January 30, 2017 Darcy L. HooverLeave a comment

I watch Jamie Oliver cooking shows with such envy. I covet his wonderful kitchen garden.

For about half of the year I have a garden, but then the Canadian winter comes and my access to fresh veggies, herbs and cheerful flowers gets blanketed in ice and snow.

This year we had a kitchen renovation done, which included running a counter under a west facing window. I’ve tried to grow herbs indoors before with spotty success – I am infamous for my annual early winter rosemary death watch. Part of the new kitchen plan was that to create this sunny spot that would, hopefully, be able to support a few potted herbs and cheery flowers.

The kitchen renovation dragged out a bit longer than I had hoped, and potted kitchen herbs aren’t in stores right now, but shortly before Christmas I managed to pick up a ‘turkey’ herb mix and some bulbs at Home Depot. The herbs and some tulips are sitting in my kitchen window now, and I have some some crocuses are in my office.

I’ve already used snips of rosemary for some roasted grapes and some fresh parsley in chicken soup. Hopefully I will find further uses for some of the four herbs I have.

I’m gaining daily consolation from my tulips and crocuses. They remind me spring will come back sooner, rather than later.

Hopefully I will be able to find and nurture a broader range of herbs and repeat my spring bulb success over all my future winters in my new sunny kitchen window.

Creativity in the kitchen – menu planning made fun

January 22, 2017January 2, 2017 Darcy L. HooverLeave a comment

I love to cook, about that there can be no doubt. I love to eat well. I love to play with ingredients and flavours. I love the challenge of making something tasty out of what’s on hand. I love to step back and admire a lovely, lovingly prepared plate of food.

This means I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. To make that a bit easier, my kitchen just got a make-over. Pragmatically, we needed a few things to accommodate our family’s unique needs and wants.

High on the list of reasons for the renovation was that we needed more pantry space and a better approach to manage meal planning. More than once in the early days of our blended family adventure I was reduced to tears trying to make everyone happy with what we had in the cupboard. Having to come up with a meal on the spot every day was stressful to say the least.

One of the boys has some anxiety about food because he was raised with food as a battle ground. It is my firm belief that forcing a child to eat will only create a picky eater. No one, not even a child, likes to have no control over what they put in their mouths.

The best planning tactic I found to alleviate my stress and the boys’ anxiety is to write the meal plan for the two weeks my husband’s sons are with us on our calendar so we can all see it ahead of time. I leave the experimenting and improvisation for when it’s just my husband, my son and I because we have fewer issues with food.

Meal planning feels like a chore most of the time; partly because the lack of spontaneity removes the creative side of cooking that I love so much. As a parting solution, the contractor for our kitchen renovation made the meal planning fun for me. She suggested I hang a chalk board on the tiled wall next to the stove to write the meals on.

I bought myself a box of coloured chalk and am having so much fun writing menus it is ridiculous.

Now the boys don’t just know what’s for dinner, they get to decide if the meal is as good as advertised – then decide if the chef or the artist get higher marks for presentation.

Eggs, eggs, eggs for dinner

January 8, 2017January 6, 2017 Darcy L. HooverLeave a comment

sugar — The lovely people with the UofA’s heritage chicken program sent me some pictures for Christmas.

I adopted a chicken this past fall. The University of Alberta has a heritage chicken program that helps fund its work by adopting out their flock. It’s a brilliant plan. Adoptive chicken parents get eggs, and the University keeps a unique breed of chicken alive. My chicken is a Brown Leghorn that I named Sugar.

We got our first eggs Jan 5th.

I gave these first eggs the honour of centre stage in our dinner and made poached eggs on a bed of barley risotto, with flat bread and a spinach salad to round out the meal.

A while back I found that I get a better poached eggs by adding touch of vinegar in he water, but the real determinant of a nice looking poached egg is the freshness of the egg itself. These eggs were fresh and poached beautifully. Barley risotto has a nutty taste that complimented the creamy egg.

first-sugar-egg-meal — This is my plate. The guys had two eggs each and more risotto.

Sugar’s Eggs with Barley Risotto

You’ll need one part pot barley to 2-2 1/2 parts liquid. I chose vegetable broth.

I used a cup of barley. It yielded four servings.

Pot barley
Stock
Carrot, celery, onion finely diced
Garlic, minced
Another diced veggie (I chopped up pea pods)
White wine
Oil
Thyme

Cook the diced onion, celery and carrot in a deep frying pan. When those are cooked but not browned throw in a little minced garlic and stir that for a second. Then add a glug of white wine – maybe 1/4C. Add thyme. Throw in the barley and stir. Pour in stock to cover the barley. Keep the liquid on a low simmer, stirring frequently. Continue to add broth to keep the barley covered as the liquid is absorbed. The barley will be lightly chewy when it is done, but not crunchy. It takes 20-40 minutes depending on temperature. It is done when it is done.

The other vegetable goes into the risotto nearer the end. Pea pods take no time to cook so I added them right at the end when the risotto was done. I stirred them in, turned off the heat, and covered the pan while I poached the eggs. That was enough to steam the chopped pea pods.

Make the salad. I made a simple dressing out of olive oil, white wine vinegar, dijon mustard and a little salt and pepper. I keep small glass jars for this, put the oil, acid and seasoning in and shake it in the jar.

When the barley is done and covered, bring the water for the eggs to a boil in a shallow pan. Put a dash of vinegar in the water. Poach the eggs in the boiling water.

Serve the eggs on a bed of barley.

Christmas baking – Fruitcake

December 18, 2016December 9, 2016 Darcy L. HooverLeave a comment

Some of my favourite childhood memories are of my mom baking. There are many of her recipes that I make every Christmas season. Her shortbread – proper chewy shortbread. Her butter tarts. Her sugar cookies.

But one thing mom never made was fruitcake. About 10 years ago my grandmother gave me a recipe for a Christmas pudding that her mother made on the farm when she was a child. It was an old-world recipe adapted for the limitations imposed by winter on an isolated Alberta farm. I’ve made it, but didn’t love it.

That left me looking for a better alternative. I spent a few years searching for a fruitcake recipe I really loved. I finally found one a couple years ago, which of course I tinkered with until I got it just so.

Favourite Christmas Fruitcake

Ingredients:

1 lb dried fruits
Maraschino cherries
Rum or brandy
Cinnamon, ginger, cardamon, cloves nutmeg, salt
Lemon zest
1 1/2 C butter
1 C brown sugar, 3/4 C white sugar
3 1/4 C flour
6 eggs
3/4 C finely chopped almonds
1 tsp vanilla

Instructions:

Soak the dried fruits in dark rum or brandy over night. I use a mix of figs, candied peel, raisins, currents, candied ginger, dried bing cherries and mixed candied fruits (which if the label is to be believed included rutabaga). Soak the maraschino cherries as well, but separately from the other fruit.

The next day you make the cake.

Cream 1 1/2 C of room temperature butter with the sugar. Beat in the eggs one by one, then add the vanilla and 2 tb of brandy or dark rum, and 1 tsp of lemon zest.

In a separate large bowl mix:

1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp each, ginger, cardamon, cloves
1/8 tsp each, nutmeg, salt

To this spice mix add the flour and almonds. Stir this into the butter, sugar and eggs.

Fold in your dried fruits.

Line your cake pans with parchment paper and spoon the mixture in.

Sometimes I line the bottom of the cake pan with the cherries, sometimes I arrange them on the top of the cakes. Either way works.

Bake at 350 F until you can stick a knife in the centre and it comes out clean. I also place a dish of water in the oven to create steam to keep the cakes from drying too much.

This cake is good immediately, but it is extra special good if you make it a few weeks in advance and pour some rum or brandy over it every second day.

I am told these can be soaked with brandy one last time then lit on fire, but I have never tried it myself.

The hunting season widow

November 6, 2016October 16, 2016 Darcy L. HooverLeave a comment

Every November I lose my husband. While he’s out wandering the woods hunting, I eat alone. Even for an introvert there has to be something to look forward to in extended alone time, and for my hunting season widowhood that something is eating the foods my husband won’t.

A November Hunting Widow’s Menu:

Gnocchi with Gorgonzola Sage Sauce

The first time I had this was nine years ago in a tiny San Francisco restaurant. I came home and immediately worked on duplicating it, which turned out to be fairly easy.

I just melt the cheese into cream and add a couple sage leaves. Easy peasy.

I use Cambozola, which is somewhere between Camembert and Gorgonzola. I am incredibly lucky to live near Edmonton’s Italian Centre Shop. They carry this and every other cheese my heart desires.

Pebre

Pebre is a fresh salsa I learned to make from my son’s father’s Chilean family. There are many family specific versions.

I use corn oil, lemon juice, tabasco, minced onion and cilantro. It tastes better the next day.

I usually make myself some fried fish Chilean style and rice to go with it.

Spaghetti Squash

Another thing the Italian Centre shop always has is nice manageable sized squashes.

I steam the squash and pull the strands away from the rind. I mix that with olive oil, salt, pepper, finely minced or crushed garlic, red pepper flakes and some good quality shredded mozzarella. Bake that until it turns golden brown on top.

Beets

Last of the hunting widow menu items is my roasted beets.

I peel and slice the beets, and toss them in a mix of olive oil, finely diced or crushed garlic, and balsamic vinegar. I bake that until the beets are tender. I like to eat them as a side a dish with perogies.

Curry

As for the curry, that I leave to the professionals.

When winter comes too soon

October 23, 2016September 19, 2016 Darcy L. HooverLeave a comment

It happens every year. Winter comes too soon. I am never really ready to surrender my garden, I retreat under duress. Every year I spend one evening ruefully bringing in all the green tomatoes one step ahead of a forecasted killing frost.

One family can only eat so many delicious fried green tomatoes, and it’s really hard to fry cherry tomatoes. But I hate wasting what I watched grow, so I’ve found a use for those little green garden babies.

I was given a Martha Stewart cookbook that has a really good recipe for tomato relish, and I tweaked it to my tastes.

How I made the relish:

I take all the sad little cherry tomatoes that are not quite ripe and dice them. I add diced garlic, ginger, onions and bell pepper.

To this I add cider vinegar, salt, brown sugar, mustard and some water.
Then I boil it down until the all the ingredients are soft enough to be fully mixed – sometimes this means I add more water as necessary. Easy peasy. And yummy.

I’ve never canned it , there is never enough to bother. I just pop it in the fridge and use it up over the last month of the grilling season.

Keep the relish basics intact – vinegar and salt and sugar – then taste as you go and adjust as it suits your family’s preferences. Word of warning, use only the little tomatoes that had a chance of ripening; using the very small ones tends to make the relish bitter.

Fun food finds

October 9, 2016September 19, 2016 Darcy L. HooverLeave a comment

In mid September on the way home from saying a final good-bye to my grandmother, my husband and I stopped in Bonnyville for a break and a coffee. We didn’t have time to get much off the main street so when we passed an old house with a sign saying ‘cafe & antiques‘ we parked and headed in.

The coffee was fine. Hubby got an americano, I got a hot chocolate. The fun part was what I found wandering through the rooms of collectibles.

This is a 1929 version of the White House Cookbook. It’s obviously well used, but the binding and pages are intact. There are some annotations next to a couple recipes.

With recipes like lettuce sandwich, creamed tuna fish, pickled chicken, prune and peanut butter sandwiches, chicken pudding, spiced beef relish, eggs in jelly, and brain cutlets I think it will spend most of its time on the shelf as a interesting conversation starter. I may try some of the bread recipes and I already follow some of the health suggestions.

This is a fabulous find. How it ended up in an antique store in northern Alberta I don’t know, but I like to think that it came up in a hope chest with a young bride. A young woman maybe like my Granny Ada Young who came up from Pennsylvania to
homestead near Dunstable, Alberta with her new husband John.

Maybe this was an sentimental buy. The grandmother whose funeral I was coming home from was born to Ada and John on that homestead. I’m less prone to sentimentality than I am to an obsession with history, but this may be the exception.

It is going to be a joy to find this a place of honour in my new kitchen. Somewhere near my other food related kitchen decorations, my mother’s kitschy early 70’s cookbooks, and near the little book that holds my Grandmother’s pastry recipe.

What CAN you do with a garden bounty?

September 25, 2016September 19, 2016 Darcy L. HooverLeave a comment

Two years ago I planted four jalapeño pepper plants on a whim. The plants thrived and I got a small bounty of peppers. Obviously when the frost came I had to do something with them, so I pickled my first three jars of jalapeños.

Last year I did two small batches, one in early August and one at frost. Bear in mind that I have never pickled more than four, 500ml jars at a time so I have never heat processed them. They get eaten in under a month so it hasn’t been necessary. This year we had some thieving deer wander up from the ravine and eat the leaves off the plants stunting their growth and killing some. If we get a bigger crop next year I will heat process them, but this year it looks like I’ll get about three jars.

I googled a simple recipe. They turned out nicely so I wrote the recipe in my recipe scribbler. Every year I go back to that recipe and wonder because it has no sugar or salt, but it works.

Quick pickled jalapeño peppers:

I started by blanching the peppers, then slicing them.

The slices go into a pot with equal parts water and white wine vinegar and clove of two of garlic, which I bring to a boil.

I ladle the peppers into jars, and cover them with the remaining liquid.

Then I stick the jars in the fridge. They taste best after a couple days, then they go fast.

These were a particular favourite of my middle son. He likes that they are crispier that store bought. I like them because they are more garlicky. The boys all put them on pizzas/calzones, sandwiches, paninis, and my husband puts them on his meat, cheese and pickle snack plates.

It’s pretty small scale pickling, but it’s very satisfying to see how enthusiastically they get eaten.

One cook, five palates

August 27, 2016August 31, 2016 Darcy L. HooverLeave a comment

One of the reasons I started this blog is because I have been really struggling to cook for a blended family for the past four years.

My husband and I brought together our teen aged sons to form what I have to say is a pretty successful family unit. I don’t want to diminish that success, but food has been an ongoing problem.

The first issue has been our differing relationships to food. Everyone has food likes and dislikes. That’s a given. But we all also develop a relationship to food that is dictated by our home environment and how food factors into our upbringing.

I raised my son with the same relationship to food that I was raised with (thanks mom!). He was encouraged to try new foods, but never required to. There was no punishment for not trying, and certainly no punishment for not liking a new food. He was also encouraged to revisit foods he had already tried and disliked. We both have certain foods we simply would never choose first and a few we just avoid, but we’re overall good eaters.

My step sons have a completely different relationship to food. They were brought up old school and dinner was mandated eating. As a result, new foods cause them quite a bit of anxiety and they are very hesitant to try anything new. When they do try new food it’s usually a fake attempt because they’ve already decided they don’t want to like it.

The second consistent issue is meat. I’m not a fan, neither is my son. I started turning away beef as a tween. I now rarely touch pork (but bacon, am I right?). I eat chicken in small portions. My son eats all of those meats, but also prefers small portions in relation to the vegetables and grains offered.

My husband and his boys were raised in meat centric cultures. Pork and beef centric cultures, with some potatoes and veggies haphazardly placed on the side.

The third and last issue is prepared versus fresh foods.
Here again, I cook the way I was raised (thanks again, mom!). I cook from scratch with very few prepared ingredients. This results in far healthier meals. I think they are tastier too because I can’t stand too much salt and sugar.

The real rub is that it also means I put a significant amount of thought into planning and
preparing meals. When they don’t get eaten it feels like I have completely wasted my time.

My son avoids fast food, as do I. We don’t feel good when we eat it. We don’t like prepared foods either because we were raised on them and are accustomed to the taste of real food, without all the salt and sugar.

My husband’s kids seem to gravitate toward prepared foods and fast food. I have serious concerns about their future health based on their eating habits. I’d like to think I can expand their culinary horizons, broaden their palates, and set them up for better lifelong health.

A lot of this blog is going to reference these three issues. I am hoping that they are issues for other cooks in other families as well, and that sharing my struggle helps someone else with their struggle.