new book, pretty tart

As I carried the tart, all safely wrapped in aluminum foil, towards the house of some very hungry friends, I felt positively neighbourly in a really old timey way. Granted, this baking adventure was a pretty selfish one. I’d bought a new baking book, penned by the perennial uppity bitch Martha Stewart and wanted to make something beautiful out of it. Out of all of the titillating recipes in Martha Stewart’s Pies and Tarts, I settled on the milk chocolate and pistachio tart.

I made it. It was beautiful as evidenced by my dear friend Megan Verhey’s photograph of it, it was delicious and it was rich. It was too much tart for me. So I brought it to the aforementioned house full of hungry friends where it promptly disappeared. Nice work Martha.

gastronomic goal no. 35: learn to like cooked tomato

I have been working long and hard to try to rid myself of my terrible dislike of cooked tomatoes. I think this might be the granddaddy of all of my food aversions. Don’t get me wrong. I love raw tomatoes. Love. But there’s something about the weird watery texture, the added sweetness that rears its head when they’re cooked.

Today was yet another attempt to learn to like cooked tomatoes and while I still prefer my pasta sauce to be cream rather than tomato based, with a lovely lunch I may have made the cooked fruit tolerable. Even likable.

I wanted a lunch that was almost entirely roasted tomatoes with only a little to distract from it (the ultimate test) and that’s what I got. I got the idea from this recipe in this month’s Saveur Magazine.

It was a lot of tomato to handle but I honestly enjoyed it. The bread and garlic helped a whole lot though.

eating in victoria day 3

Though as I write this I am back at work in Ontario eating grocery store sushi at my computer, my mouth is still watering from thinking of the last meal I had in Victoria. It wasn’t in a restaurant but it was incredible.

The day before, my boyfriend and I went to a little microbrewery called Swans Buckerfield’s Brewery and each selected a beer that we thought sounded interesting for dinner the following day.

I picked the Pandora Pale Ale

and my boyfriend got the oatmeal stout (which I liked best surprisingly)

But long before we could sit down and sip our beers over dinner, we had a date with some kayaks and Brentwood Bay. I always get stressed out before kayaking because there’s so much to think about. Making sure the kayaks are properly on the roof racks, that you have the whole myriad of equipment necessary for the venture, that you know where you’re going to launch from, that there’s a place to unload near where you’re launching, that kayaks are heavy and difficult to unload, that you have to wear Crocs in order to keep your sneakers from getting wet when you launch and so on and so forth. But as soon as I was down on the shore, about to be launched and in my kayak, I was won over by the wonderful smell of the Pacific ocean and by how calm the water was in the bay.

And we saw a seal…

looking away but a seal up close none the less

Being on the water and smelling that ocean smell made me crave crab something fierce. But none of this imitation crab business. Crab bought alive and killed right before cooking. Steamed until it turned bright red and then smothered in garlicy butter and served alongside french bread to mop up the juices left behind. It would be an event.

And that’s exactly what we had for dinner (plus some brussel sprouts for good measure).

A wonderful simple supper eaten with reckless abandon for how messy it is. I can’t wait to go back to Victoria next month.

eating in Victoria day 2

While day two in Victoria included just as much food as the one before, I had a major fail when it came to remembering to photograph the food before diving in. The day involved a good amount of walking around, some coffee, big filling bowls of pho at Pho Vy, and…

cupcakes from Pink Sugar Cupcakery

mine was the Elvis (banana cake topped with peanut butter frosting and peanuts)

Not to mention the lychees that were eaten while watching the new BBC Earth Life dvds. It was my boyfriends first lychees and the experience went over as swimmingly as it had with me just days earlier.

No restaurants the next day but good food to be had none the less…

eating in Victoria day 1

So as planned, after caching up on a little lost sleep, I hit the ground in Victoria eating. The boy I happen to be visiting here had to work much of the day yesterday so I struck out on my own, running some errands, visiting old Victoria haunts and grabbing a few bites along the way.

The first thing I did upon arriving in downtown Victoria was to deal with the lunch situation. I wanted something that wouldn’t loose anything if I took it to go and so, I selected Pig to be my lunch destination. Pig is a barbecue joint I had been to once before and was very impressed. They were also a stone’s throw from a nice park that  I thought would be a great place to eat all by myself.

pulled pork sandwich and black cherry cola from Pig

After lunch (which btw doesn’t look like much but was incredible) I did some running around and gave myself a walking tour of Victoria. I started to feel a little sleepy and in need of a sit down which was the perfect opportunity to reunite myself with a hot cup of Salt Spring Coffee.

cup of Salt Spring Coffee

And then, because I just wasn’t awake enough yet, I went down the street to my favourite bakery in Victoria. I watched them load wood into their giant ovens while I quietly enjoyed a cookie and another coffee.

dark chocolate dipped shortbread and americano at Wild Fire Bakery

And finally, my gentleman companion got off work and with just a few hours until the movie we were seeing was set to start, we decided to grab a gourmet burger and a microbrew at The Pink Bicycle.

lamb and blue cheese burger with truffle fries at The Pink Bicycle

More eating to come tomorrow…

what to eat on an airplane

Very shortly I will be on an airplane on my way to Victoria to visit a boy. Even though there are delicious things to eat on the other side of this plane voyage, I still think it’s tremendously important to bring actually good food to eat on the plane. There is nothing quite as depressing as being hungry, starving even, and having hours ahead of you to be spent sitting in a tiny little seat and the only food to be had are the free packets if Bits and Bites they offer you every so often.

I thought long and hard about the food I would bring for my plane voyage and have finally settled on:

my very first quart of beautiful Ontario strawberries

a baguette with sweet butter and prosciutto on it

and just for good measure,a bar of dark chocolate with chili for a little heat

So with the food part of the journey taken care of, I’m all set. Stay tuned for delicious Victoria food adventures.

eating lychees on the curb in the afternoon

I have a confession to make. I had never tasted a lychee until yesterday afternoon. I had always assumed that I eventually would and most likely would very much enjoy the experience but it wasn’t until yesterday that I took the plunge. Yesterday, I found myself desperately in need of some iron in the form of a nice, thick steak and so I accompanied a friend to the grocery store. There I was prompted to try a lychee for the very first time and try I did. It was not what I expected, better, but also quite different. The rough outer layer peeled away easily to reveal a light, juicy inside with a delicate but distinctive flavour. And so it was that I found myself sitting on a filthy curb in the parking lot of a supermarket, sucking every last bit of lychee left around the long dark pit.

I fully intend to repeat the experience.

It reminded me of another aspect of my imaginary adult kitchen which will be a lovely three-tiered hanging fruit basket, the top of which I may have to devote entirely to lychee.

gastronomic goal no. 4: make pizza totally from scratch

I’ve been eating a lot of cooked tomatoes in the name of crossing off another gastronomic goal and realized that in the process I could make pizza from scratch and cross that one off too.

Now the title of this post is a little bit of a misnomer because in reality to make a pizza totally from scratch would mean not only making the dough but growing the tomatoes for the sauce, making the mozzarella and growing the basil to finish it. I fully intend to do this one day but for now I thought that making the dough and growing the basil would sufficiently meet the demands of ‘scratch.’

At the beginning of the spring I happily went with my mother to a garden centre and bought myself three potted herbs to go with a small pot of assorted baby herbs I had already been growing in my window sill. While I don’t have a green thumb, I cared for them and watched as they grew.

The one I was most exited for was the basil which was the smallest of the herbs and also my favourite. In my mind’s eye I imagined the basil leaves on a homemade Neapolitan pizza and waited excitedly until there were enough of them to harvest.

Then the day came and, using Jim Lahey’s pizza dough recipe and this guide to making Neapolitan pizza, I made a pizza from scratch.

Sure it was nothing special. Crushed San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella, dough and finally a few little basil leaves. But it’s still a gastronomic goal completed.

Now all I have to do is learn to actually like cooked tomatoes and that will be another one. I’m getting there though. Slow and steady.

food-block

I don’t get writers block (touch wood). Working full-time at a newspaper has taught me to turn my writing on and off at a moment’s notice and while not everything I write is great, I do manage to write completed works with a great deal of regularity. What I do get is food-block. Which is to say that I go through unfortunate fazes where I am simply not feeling particularly inspired to cook. I blame it on the heat, not having as many people to cook for, even a lack of funds sometimes. But the God’s honest truth is that right now, as I write this, I have a terrible case of food-block. It’s so bad that I’m not even as hungry as I normally am.

This will not do.

I love food. I love it more than most other things. The only things that can possibly compete are dogs and some really specific people. And so it pains me to not have the burning desire to turn raw materials into fully composed dishes. But never fear. I have turned to some key sources of food inspiration and am confident that I’ll soon be back on my feet (and in an apron of course).

One of these sources of inspiration is British Columbia. In a few short days I will be returning to Victoria, BC (the city that gave me my passion for food in the first place) and I can’t wait to share some delicious food adventures with you all while I’m there.

The second source of inspiration is former New York Times food writer Amanda Hesser’s book Cooking for Mr. Latte. When I had first heard of the book my expectations were fairly low. The story of a woman dating a man who doesn’t like food as much as her? Really? But after my first read, I was in love with the way Amanda is whip-smart when it comes to the foodstuffs and eats some of the most wonderful sounding things. Some of the meals she describes in the book are enough to have me on my feet and in front of the stove in mere minutes.

And so, with the help of British Columbia and Amanda Hesser, I will be creating culinary delights in no time.

the kitchen of my grown up self

I like to imagine what the kitchen of my grown up self will contain. And then I like to gather those things so that I have them when the time comes that I don’t live in a student apartment with a revolving door of roommates, each with their own home decorating tastes. These treasures, be they wine goblets, tea trays or a set of vintage egg cups that are proudly displayed on a wooden shelf are not things I own presently but instead they are things that I will own (maybe) someday. My kitchen will be eclectic and functional. I think about my grown up kitchen a lot.

Especially after browsing in stores like Le Chat Noir, a fantastic little antique store on a side street in Guelph. This place prioritizes the kitchen when selecting its curiosities and for that I am grateful. Sadly though, in the name of spending very little money, I left Le Chat Noir yesterday totally empty handed and was forced to scour the internet while dreaming about potential kitchen purchases. I found some lovely things.

a pair of vintage teak lunch trays

vintage egg cups

vintage enamelware lobster pot

vintage pewter pitcher

vintage steak knives

vintage baking set