To blog or not to blog

It seems like it's already been too long since my last post. I don't think I can even remember all the food-related musings I've had in these past days. This is now leading me to question how much sense it makes for me to keep maintaining this extended food narrative.

When I started it all, it was at a time when my life was pretty unstructured and I had a fair bit of time on my hands. I wanted to write. I also made a point to seek out things to write about. I feel like things are a little bit different now; there's some pretty obvious structure to my days- they get full pretty quickly, and sitting down to catalogue the events at the end of the day is somehow not something I'm super inspired to do. I would be concerned, if there was any worry my passions for food would go uncultivated, but it seems, so far at least that that will not be a problem.

There was an amazing dinner with the housemates from last year the other night- salmon stuffed manicotti, potatoes, delicious avocado salad, baked vegetables, bread, cheese, and wine- what a way to spend a tuesday night. There have been the innovative sandwiches trying to use up our abundance of eggplant. There's been a lot of baking, savory breads, zucchini breads. All the pickling and canning- tomato sauce, bread and butter pickles, dill pickles, pickled cauliflower, pickled peppers. There was the pie party I went to last night with a bunch of people from the circus academy, including the delicious raw vegan avocado-lime pie with a sprouted buckwheat crust.

Food will still be sought after, and relished- for sure. I just don't know if it still makes sense to make an effort to rehash all the goodness in my awkward online narration. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I think  that it doesn't make sense to push it if it feels like and obligation. I think I choose having a life over making sure I share food-related thought that crosses my mind.

So, perhaps this is the last post for some time, perhaps not. Maybe I'll only take the time to write reviews of the restaurants I find through Zagat here; or maybe I will find I need to write much more in the near future, who knows. I'm not attached to a decision, but those are my musings till the next time whenever that may be... 

So much goodness!

Saturday September 13th was a great day. I was anticipating a boring weekend, but Mike's invitation to go downtown to find some flank steak at Atwater Market for beef jerky set the weekend off in a direction that was in no way boring. The 211 bus ride downtown was long as ever and left us feeling a little nauseous, and not really excited in anyway. But a cup of coffee changed all that and all of a sudden, what wasn't there to be excited about, surrounded by fresh local produce, cheeses, meats and general bustling goodness. I picked out an exciting looking cheese- a small, round, semi-soft, mold-ripened beauty sold on a chestnut leaf; I got some chicken livers from one of the butchers, and some potatoes from one of the produce stands outside. Mike got some sausage and double-smoked bacon, and we went in together on the flank steak and a basket of pickling cucumbers. The whole process of wandering through the goods and selecting our purchases and finding inspiration was exilirating, and we walked out of there thoroughly stoked about our cooking plans.

First thing upon returning we cut up the steak and built our marinade for the jerky, a simple affair with soy sauce, worchestershire, honey, red pepper and probably some other flair. Then we went on a search for something to dry the meat on, and with Walmart closed we settled for some cheap aluminum trays we found in the grocery store (perforating them with a nail proved to be incredibly tedious!). 

Dinner was in order and someone had the idea for perogies, so we boiled potatoes and made a simple dough and before we knew it we were pinching together our little pockets. While this was happening Mike banged out a little hummus and I threw together some zucchini bread with big zucchini's fresh from the campus garden. Dinner was ready, the kitchen was hot and we all sat down on the living room floor with a heaping plate of perogies to dip into Sriracha and Ranch. 

By the time we were done eating the steak had marinaded long enough, and we set up a make-shift dehydrator in Mike's loft with the fibrous strips of beef laid out carefully on the perforated sheets, set on top of a fan. Things were slowing down and most people were pretty beat- it was getting late- but I was flying high! There was something about processing all this food and having more to do that had me real energized. So as  people went to bed, I got ready for the next phase of operations!

We still had three monster cucumbers from the campus garden, so saving the stuff we bought at the market for a time when everyone could participate, a started cutting up the big ones. They went into a big bowl with some chopped onions and salt to set.  I sterilized a couple Ball jars and rings and lids, prepared a simple brine with vinegar and sugar, and then shifted operations.

While the cucumbers set I had the time to get pate production under way. The half pound of chicken livers went into a pan with almost as much butter and half a large sliced onion. When all was cooked it went into the blender with some crushed garlic, worchestershire, rosemary, thyme and a little nutmeg. When  it was al blended nicely I poured the puree into a bread pan and decided thinly sliced tomatoes on top would be a nice touch. I also poured a little melted butter on top to finish it.

The pate went in the fridge, and the cucumbers were ready to be rinsed and go into jars. I packed the jars, brought the brine to a boil, poured it in, capped them up and stuck them in the big pot to boil for about ten minutes. Somehow by the time all this was finished it was 3 in the morning, but I was hardly tired- it was all so good: in one night there was beef jerky, perogies, zucchini bread, pickles and chicken liver pate! Awesome...

Back: Rediscovering passions in a freshly painted kitchen

                                                                     Well, it's been a while since my last post. The summer was full of adventures, leading canoe trips in the beauty Temagami region of Ontario, and now that I'm back at school the adventures continue although they are more culinary and less wilderness-y. It felt like yesterday was the first day that food came back into focus for me in a big way. Perhaps it was buying a Zagat guide to plan a tour of Montreal's restaurants; it might have been the little conversation I had with my friend Jacob who has been blogging about his shift to a vegan diet at  http://www.r4n0k.com; or maybe it was cutting up hot peppers with my friend Mike to make hotsauce on Sunday; but I was reminded of how excited I get about food- preparing it, looking at it, tasting it, talking about it.

So last night it all came together. Jamina, my housemate, has some friends visiting, and it seems whenever we have visitors, my cheese-making knowledge is called upon. I may actually have become a tourist attraction of sorts- just like you should eat a cheesesteak in Philly, you should make cheese with Chris in Ste-Anne. Unfortunately when I left Pennsylvania at the end of the summer I forgot my thermometer, rennet and cultures along with my nice perforated ladel, so my capabilities are limited. However, ricotta is easy to make and doesn't really require any of that equipment. We also happened to have some lasagna noodles in our cupboard- all of a sudden, evening meal plans were becoming obvious! 

Part of the reason the culinary adventures hadn't started sooner, was that our kitchen had been kind of out of commission. It was in desperate need of love and we undertook its painting. So it was only recently that our tangerine-fizz orange and plantain green kitchen was usable. 

Anyways, we put the gallon of whole milk on medium heat around 5pm. I decided it had reached 185 degrees F when the milk was steaming and slight froth had formed at the edges. The pot came off the heat, in went the 1/3cup of white vinegar and a pinch of salt, and it was left to sit. 

An hour later, I was anxious for the curd to be ready, but it definitely needed more time. After two hours, it still didn't look great. I gave it a stir, and immediately regretted it- it was awfully milky and probably just needed to sit undisturbed.  I walked away, but I couldn't stay away. Around 8pm I decided with a little more heat the cheese might happen. I put the heat back on- I was only planning on ten minutes, but all of a sudden back in my econ reading a half hour had gone by. I rushed back to the kitchen, opened the lid expecting the worst, but there, in the pot was a nicely separated mixture of curds and whey. I poured the contents into the cheesecloth-lined colander, already in the sink. 

I let the cheese drain about ten minutes, and in the mean time I got out a pyrex dish, whatever tomato sauce we had kicking around, some mushrooms; I put on some water for the noodles, and took out an onion, some garlic and a shallot, all taken from our generous campus garden. My noise in the kitchen brought in others and as I still had reading to do, after the ricotta got out of the cheesecloth and into a bowl, I passed on the cooking. Somehow I got through my economics chapters and came out to see a delicious looking bean salad with chick peas, kidney beans, cucumbers and red bell peppers; Emily was preparing garlic bread from a fresh baguette, and a vegetarian lasagna with homemade ricotta cheese, spinach and mushrooms was in the oven!

All of a sudden our apartment was bustling; Mike, Roman, and Basel came over from next door, and all eight of us sat down to enjoy a late meal in our living room. It didn't matter that I should've been in bed or that there was a pile of dishes- I was reminded of the joys that come with food- the satisfaction in making something for oneself and the community that forms around meals.