What do you call baked fruit with an oat/flour/butter topping? Crisp? Crumble? Cobbler? I usually say crisp, though the usual oat and butter topping is more crumbly than crispy. A cobbler is more cakey, no?
Well, whatever you call it, I’ve got a new take that has become one of my favourites.
It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s delicious. It’s healthy. Can you ask for anything more in a recipe? It only has three, yes, three ingredients. Click to continue reading
The classic combination of bacon and eggs combine to make a light summer meal salad. Topped off with an avocado dressing, it could be for breakfast or any other meal. The kids polished this off quickly!
Is any woman, young or old, immune to a negative perception of their own body at some point? I exclude men, not because they don’t have issues with body image, but because I know little of their body-self relationship; not only have I not talked to many men about this subject, I’m inclined to think they speak less of it in general.
There is, of course, always the question of weight, but body image involves issues like uneven ears, large foreheads, or knobby knees. As a teenager I would have had nose surgery in a second, now the idea is abhorrent to me (although I am convinced it did grow before the rest of me).
But our views about ourselves are not always based on reality. For example, as a teen I always considered myself chubby, even though I was quite active in sports. I don’t really know if I was or not, to be honest, I haven’t looked at pictures from that age in an eon. I was rather laid back about it though and contented myself with dabbing fat off of pizza. Fortunately, I was never tempted to throw up or starve myself. After my first child, I could fit into a pair of shorts from high school and considered myself a skinny minny. Same size, different perspective. Click to continue reading
Any fruit can be used to make this juice concentrate. Keep in the fridge and pull out to make an instant glass of cold apricot nectar to drink on hot summer days.
It’s apricot season right now, trees are laden with orange spheres of tart flesh. It’s rather decorative, orange set against green. When tree fruits are in season, however, they come in a deluge but are soon over, gone for another year.
When we had the first basket of apricots, my husband buried his face in them and inhaled. “Ah,” he sighed, “the smell of summer.” When he was a child, his family would pick boxes of apricots and take them to sell in a spa town. Click to continue reading
Eggplant, or aubergine, forms the creamy base for this dairy free pasta sauce but you’d never guess it! Paired with chicken and topped with zucchini noodles, or zoodles, this makes a filling and delicious meal.
Living with four children in an apartment, as is our current situation, is far from my ideal. I eagerly look forward to having a yard someday. There are, however, positives to most circumstances.
The other day I was in the kitchen and the shouts of children outside brought a smile to my face. It reminded me of the good ol’ days before technology, you know, the ones when kids walked barefoot to school uphill both ways after milking cows in the morning. Click to continue reading
I apologize in advance – this is the third fruit/herb mix that I’ve posted in a row. But on the other hand, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Fruit and herbs are delectable together, and I’m here to make sure more people get to experience their complementary awesomeness.
When I came to Europe, one difference that took me by surprise was the water. Europeans buy water more than I remember in North America, and there are so many options to choose from. Most people buy sparkling water, which I still haven’t really gotten used to. There are three types of water: no fizz, lightly fizzy, and regularly fizzy. Click to continue reading
My sister Kazuko visited me in Slovakia a few years ago. It was hot and we bought a large watermelon for the kids to slurp on the balcony, juice dripping down their chins. She started to cut into it.
“It has seeds!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t seen seeds in a watermelon for ages!”
The problem with foraging wild flowers is that they are rather finicky.
If it rains, it washes away the pollen and reduces the taste of the flowers. This year it started to rain heavily just when the lilacs came into bloom. Last year I made an amazing lilac ice cream; this year it had no taste.
Some flowers all bloom in one shot, so that they are available only for a short time. Behind my inlaws’ village is an avenue lined with black locust trees; when in bloom the fragrance in the air is intoxicating. The trees look like they are covered in snow and white blossoms drift to the ground like large perfumed snowflakes. But if you’re a little late, too bad. I missed the peak of the black locusts and, while I managed to gather a handful of late blossoms, the recipe didn’t turn out the first time. Click to continue reading
While serving this ice cream to my daughter, I taught her the “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream” ditty. Not having heard it before, she thought it was pretty funny and ran around to everyone else saying “Say I scream!”
I realized after I titled it, however, that it’s probably more like a gelato than ice cream.
But does it really matter? It’s cold, it’s delicious, it’s refreshing. And a secret ingredient. Click to continue reading
A delight in nature influences my mother’s adventurous culinary skills. I grew up thinking it was normal to gather stinging nettles to eat or plantain to heal.
One wild vegetable/herb that is easy to forage is spruce tips. Spruce trees are the ones with scaley bark and short, prickley needles. In the spring, new growth sprouts from the ends of branches, a bright neon green against the dark old growth.
The smell of spruce tip tea brings me back to smokey fires and crisp morning alpine air. The little blackened tin pot would be have a few flecks of ash in the water, and the bright green tips would darken to an ugly brown as they infused their goodness into the hot water.
Spruce tips are full of vitamin C, although apparently three year old needles have the highest amount. The tips are much easier to gather, however, as they are easily pinched off and not prickly. Besides tea, you can also make beer, finishing salt, and spruce honey. I haven’t ventured into beer making (yet), but the salt and honey are easy to make.
Preserving herbs in honey is my favourite method of preservation – it’s easy, tasty, and lasts forever. I’ve done it with elderflowers, spruce tips, and have plans for more. Using sugar to make a medicinal syrup seems counterproductive to me, and using honey is much easier. I don’t have a recipe – just chopped up some spruce tips, threw them in a jar and poured honey overtop till it felt right, and stirred. I’m saving it for winter months, to stir in tea or take by the spoonful for colds and flus. I opened it after two weeks and it has an amazing smell and taste, quite different from the original spruce tips but I can’t describe it. You’ll just have to make it.
Making spruce finishing salt is just as easy. Chop up spruce tips finely, mix with equal amounts of (unrefined) salt, spread out to dry. When dry, put the mixture in a jar. The salt helps the spruce to dry faster; I dried some spruce tips plain, and they took much longer.
Hunger and Thirst has some excellent ideas for using spruce salt, including on mushrooms and in a bath. Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska also has some great recipes with spruce tips, including spruce mayonnaise and spruce shortbread.
I also used the spruce tips to make ice cream. I happened to use rapadura to sweeten it because it was the only sweetener I had on hand, and I ended up loving the caramel flavour of the rapadura paired with the zingyness of the spruce. For those on GAPS or AIP, dates would make a great substitute for the rapadura, I’ll update with how much when I try it.
I used homemade coconut milk which has considerabely less coconut flavour than bought coconut milk. I recommend making the coconut milk or using another mild flavoured milk, such as almond or cow milk/cream.
Spruce Tip Ice Cream (Dairy Free)
2 cups homemade coconut milk
1/2 cup spruce tips
1/2 cup rapadura
1 tsp gelatin powder
2 egg yolks
Heat the coconut milk until almost boiling. Add spruce tips and turn off the heat. I infused it for about 10 minutes, like for tea. If you are used to spruce tip flavour and want it stronger, you can infuse it for hours.
While still warm, pour the milk spruce tea through a sieve. Stir in rapadura. Sprinkle gelatin overtop and let bloom for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk egg yolks. Temper the egg yolks by adding the milk mixutre a tbsp at a time until the eggs are well mixed, about 4 tbsp. Mix the yolks with the rest of the milk.
If you have an ice cream maker, follow the instructions for your particular maker.
If you don’t have an ice cream maker but do have a high speed blender, you can try it this way: put the milk mixture in the freezer. Stir it every once in a while when you happen to remember as it’s freezing (I’m so precise, I know). I think I managed three before it froze solid. When frozen solid, use a spoon or butter knife to cut the ice cream into chunks (alternatively, freeze the ice cream mixture in ice cube trays). Put the frozen chunks inside a high speed blender and blend until smooth, pushing down the pieces with a tamper as necessary. Put back in the freezer to let it firm up again.
If you have neither ice cream maker or high speed blender, you can whisk it every 10 min or so while it freezes, but I’ve never managed to remember for enough times.
Serve and savour the wild foraged goodness!
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