Patisserie Pijoh

I am behind with blogging, and still have the Pigott reunion in Saskatchewan to cover, but I'm going to break with sequence here just because we had such a fun day, and I wanted to share it.
A couple of weeks ago, Brian and I saw signs downtown for a book festival for September 7th and wondered whether we might go. My tendency is to be quite lumpish so that when it comes time to actually doing things that in theory sound wonderful to me, I become resistant. So last night, when we discussed whether or not we would check it out, I reluctantly mumbled "yeah maybe" and unenthusiastically opened the program of events on my computer. I had no intention of reading it in its entirety (and I never did do that) so I consider it an act of Divine Providence (really!) that my eye caught the name "Peter Reinhart" on the list of authors who would be presenting. Peter Reinhart has long been a hero of mine--before we even knew we were moving to North Carolina (which happens to be his state of residence). He is a genius baker--one of the foremost in the bread scene really--and much of what I've learned about bread making is from him. When I had a sourdough crisis, I emailed him and he responded right away with a very thorough and helpful guide on how to restore my culture. I've often thought I'd like to drive to Charlotte and attend one of his classes at Johnson & Wales University.
So, when I saw that he would be in Winston giving demos of recipes from his latest book, The Joy of Gluten Free Baking, I was both excited and intrigued. We got up bright and early this morning, and left with enough time to find parking and walk over to the tent where he was presenting.
In the hour that he had, he made (all gluten and sugar free) pecan bread, garlic crackers, and blueberry pancakes. Sampling the pecan bread was what made Brian raise his eyebrows and say "we should get that book."
Peter was a lot of fun to watch baking. For one, I learned a lot about technique just by watching him. For another, he was pretty funny: he forgot the eggs in the pecan bread (it was rescued from the oven and appropriately egged), and when it came time to make the crackers, he started by following his cracker recipe and then mistakenly referring to another recipe, realizing this only near the end. And he would just laugh about these things and add more ingredients to fix his creations, and continue on in his cheerful way.
When the presentation was done, we bought a book and had him sign it, and got to chat with him for a little bit.

It seemed that baking would be our theme for the day because later in the evening, Brian and I made a lemon meringue pie together for a birthday tomorrow. I'm still quite impressed at his engineering of the meringue given that I accidentally only used one third of the sugar I was supposed to use:

I had a lot of fun baking with him. I had to substitute limes for lemons, and based on the sample of filling we tried, it was a very good substitution. It got me wondering about orange meringue pies. Does anyone know if they've ever been done? Or if they're any good? I'd love to know!

Where the buffalo roam

With a few moments of internet time available, I thought I'd grab the chance to update the blog...especially since on our way through Moosejaw, cousin Katherine expressed a tiredness of looking at patriotic eggs. I don't blame her. I've gotten sloppy...I blame traveling.

Anyway, I am in love with Saskatchewan. I suppose that given my passion for breadmaking, it shouldn't surprise me that I have such an affinity for the "breadbasket of Canada." But contrary to my expectation that Saskatchewan would be one giant, level wheat field, the varied terrain of this landscape makes me fairly certain that my love for this place goes beyond the bread link.

I feel like there's tonnes I want to post about--especially regarding the Pigott family reunion--and in this small window of opportunity there isn't time for all that, so I thought I'd share some footage of our post-reunion visit to Grasslands National Park (which goes almost right to the US border it turns out--we were only 31 km away where we were). It was my first time to visit a national park that didn't have trees (although there were the odd bushes and shrubs here and there) which made it very striking. I felt as if I had stepped into the dawn of the third day of creation, when the face of the earth had little more than grass covering it, making the lines of its hills and valleys so apparent.
The goal of Grasslands is to return that area to its native condition, ages before Canada was ever settled. They're doing this by reintroducing indigenous plant and animal species.
I have long wanted to see a buffalo in the wild, but I had heard that buffalo sightings here were hit or miss, and knowing how shy they are, I knew we might not get to see them. But with prayer and patience, contenting ourselves first with these adorable (and endangered) prairie dogs...

Guess who showed up in dogtown?

A lone, outcast bison. Apparently after the females give birth, they kick the males out of the herd, so I'm guessing that was our friend's story. Seeing him in the wild as close up as I got to was nothing short of incredible. They are such majestic creatures. I'm ashamed to admit though, that I was also reminded of how much I love bison meat. Not that I wanted to make sausages out of this guy or anything...he looked sad enough about his recent breakup, and nobody wants depressed sausage.

Happy 1st and 4th!

I may have mentioned this before: holidays in the US generally seem to be a bigger deal than they are in Canada, and this has been really apparent to me in the Independence Day celebrations I've seen throughout my life.
I have an uncle in Chapel Hill (1.5 hours away) who likes to make sure that Brian and I have company for the holidays, so he has invited us down to spend the 4th of July with him and his family. He mentioned something about having a pool and fireworks, so I knew that my regular baked goods wouldn't do. I'd have to step up my festivity game a notch or two. Here was my solution:

Independence eggs! And of course, I had to make up a plate for my home and native land:

Making these was really easy. I hard boiled a dozen eggs, left them in the fridge overnight (this seemed to help with peeling a lot), peeled them in the morning, and sliced each one in half lengthwise. Then I scooped out the yolks into a separate bowl and washed off the egg whites.
To colour them, I got out two 2-cup measuring cups. In each one, I put 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar, 40-50 drops of food colouring, and filled them to the 2 cup mark with boiling water. I put the measuring cups in the sink in case adding the egg halves caused overflow (which it did).
I placed 8 halves in the blue cup, and 8 halves in the red cup, and left them for 30 minutes (sloshing around occasionally).
To the yolks, I added 1 tbsp mustard, 1 tsp horseradish, 6 tbsp mayo, 2 tsp lime juice, 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, and 2 green onions finely chopped. I pulsed the mixture in the food processor to get it smooth, and transferred it to a zip lock bag with a corner cut out of it in order to pipe it into the whites (and reds and blues).
The piping activity gave me a newfound respect and admiration for my mother, who used to professionally decorate cakes. Let's just say I won't be quitting my job (hahaha!) to decorate cakes any time soon.
And if you'll excuse me now, I'm off to scrounge around in my closet for clothes that are red, white, and blue.

CSA

In the absence of being able to farm one's own food, the idea of community supported agriculture has always held appeal for me. The way it works is that you subscribe with a farmer sometime in the winter for a set amount of money, and then throughout the growing season, you get weekly deliveries (or pickups) of produce from them. It's a great way to eat locally (and often organically) and to try items that you might not be predisposed to buy on your own. So why haven't I joined one yet? The main reason is that we often travel in the summer, which amounts to missing about a month's worth of deliveries. If it weren't for that, I'd probably get past my other hangups about CSAs and just join one--even if only for a year. Those other hangups are:
1) being a bit of a control freak about what I'm cooking; I like some predictability in meal planning
2) being afraid of not making good use of my deliveries (either because of the quantities, or just the weirdness, of the items in question)
3) worrying that I won't actually be getting items I find useful, and having to spend a lot more on produce outside of my CSA investment
But like I said, all of these concerns I would be willing to put to the test, if it weren't for the travel issue.
Now, a friend of mine who is a devout CSAer is doing some travelling this week, and asked if I'd like her produce for the week. So I got really offended and told her I wasn't waiting for people to feed me, and how dare she assume that I had nothing better to do than to go collect her unwanted veggies. Actually, that's not how that really went---I was thrilled. It was a good way for me to just dabble in the CSA culture ever so lightly. I tagged along with her last week when she went to do a pickup then, and I'll be doing a pickup today. Here are my favourite items that we got to try from last week's batch:

Adirondack blue potatoes -- the same substance that makes blueberries so good for you is what gives these potatoes their colour

Fennel bulb -- I know that fennel isn't extremely exotic by most standards, but in our household, it is. It was one of those "what the heck do I do with this?" items, but I'm so glad this creature found its way into our home! Here's what became of it:

Fennel salad! And we really, really liked it. So much, in fact, that I will probably start buying the occasional fennel bulb just to make this salad again. Here's the recipe:
* 1 fennel bulb (I had two very small ones) - shaved paper thin on a mandoline
* 1 tbsp lime juice
* 2 tbsp olive oil
* 1/4 tsp thyme
* 1 tbsp parsley
* 2 tbsp parmesan
* 1 tsp pesto (I used the Classico stuff)
It was such a refreshing summer salad. I can't wait to make it again. Now I'm looking forward to what "challenges" this afternoon's batch will present.
Do any of you CSA? Do you love/hate it?

KUI (Knitting under the influence)...

You end up knitting doubles:

You saw the right hand turtle before in a previous post. The left hand turtle is part of an ensemble I put together for a very dear someone-expecting. He comes with a matching blanket:

This brings the official UFO count down to 11...but I keep adding to the list without realizing it. We'll see how far along the list I make it this week!

How I know that Southerners are actually Egyptian

Our church, St. Tim's, is great about organizing activities to promote community among the congregation. One of those activities is the "Sinners Dinner" which involves putting your name in a lottery from which groups are drawn. You meet with your group roughly once a month for a year before the groups get switched up again. Brian and I did not sign up when the current season started in September, but we ended up getting adopted by some choir friends into their Sinners Dinner group. Ours is a really fun bunch. We've met with them twice so far, and will be meeting with them again tonight.
It had been suggested that this month, we keep the gathering a small affair by doing appetizers only. An email thread was started to give everyone a sense of who was bringing what. Reading the responses, I observed that each household was bringing 2-3 appetizers/dessert items--hearty ones at that...so my prediction is that we'll have more food than we've had at the actual dinners. My conclusion, therefore, is that for Southerners "keep it small" means "outdo dinner." Sound like anyone you know? Anyone who says, for example, "why don't you come in for a minute just to have a glass of water?" whereby a "glass of water" comes with a side of whole chickens, stuffed grape leaves, veal cutlets, lamb chops, and kebabs? That's not the only similarity I've noticed between Southerners and Egyptians, but I'll save my other observations for another time.
I thought I'd share pictures of our contributions (y'all getting sick of bread pictures yet?)
The bread made it to our list because the couple that hosted last time, Charlie and Rhea, requested it. Rhea pulled me aside at church last week and said, "Charlie said to me 'Do you think she'll make bread again? I sure hope she makes bread!' " which of course elevated them to favourite persons status (for nothing quite strokes my ego like being ASKED to make bread.)

Next up is an item I accidentally invented several months ago, which Brian requested I make again. This is a carrot and celery bruschetta:

We're also doing a warm brie melt (which we'll bake at our host's house) that features homemade cranberry sauce and toasted pecans--or p'CONs as they call them down here. L'assembly:

And tucked away into its little brie baker:

I would share a picture of the crackers that will accompany the brie melt, but they are not homemade. It'll be a while before perfectly uniform discs of amaranth, quinoa, chia, sesame and flax make it into my repertoire.
Good company and good food make for happy Pigotts!

Cheapening a Cheap Date (Ode to a Mason Jar)

At first I hesitated to write this post: I didn't want to be sending out the impression to our friends/family that we have one small bag of rice to live off of for the month, and that we are currently accepting donations. I just think there's a lot to be said for doing things frugally...and since we've decided to be ultra frugal this month, I've been enjoying the challenge of trying to be more creative in doing things.
One of our favourite cheap dates has been the cafe date. It is exactly what it sounds like: visiting a cafe. Inexpensive, entertaining, and often productive (since Brian brings work). But in this month of austerity, we have even suspended cafe dates. As such, I wanted to find a way to recreate the cafe date at home. Yesterday was my first attempt at it. In preparation the day before, I baked healthy cookies, procured a Putumayo album by the name of "French Cafe" and collected some espresso drink recipes.
One useful frugal tidbit I picked up in my research was that there isn't much of a point in buying coffee that is specially labelled as "espresso." Any high quality, dark roast bean will do. Espresso refers strictly to the way in which it is brewed. Typically, one uses a dark roast, very finely ground, but that's not what makes it espresso. It's all in the brewing. We use one of these stovetop espresso makers:

Now, just a couple of days before Cafe Date, my milk frothing gadget bit the dust. And even though I was going to Ikea with a friend shortly after, and even though a new frother was only $3, it was simply not permissible during the month of austerity. Consequently, I ended up preparing flattes (flat lattes), but Brian didn't seem to mind. He was great about playing along with the indoor cafe. He did complain about the French music, and I explained that I thought lousy music was realistic since we often dislike the music we hear at the cafes we frequent. He countered that this was one advantage of the home cafe date, and since he made such a compelling point, I consented to change the station. We weren't even allowed to "go home" if we forgot something "at the apartment." Despite that Brian missed the people watching aspect of a real cafe, I think we had fun with it. But I can't leave well enough alone...
In trying to find a frugal way to froth milk, I came across the idea of using a mason jar. It almost sounded too good to be true: fill the jar with whatever amount of milk you desire (but don't exceed half the capacity of the jar), cover it tightly, and shake it for a full thirty seconds. Then microwave it for 30-45 seconds to stabilize the foam. And you know what? It works. (As a side note, I should mention that some fancy brands of milk will not froth for anything, like the Smart Balance milks. I should also mention that I tried the food processor to no avail. It's all about the mason jar).
So of course we had to repeat cafe date so I could attempt this. I ended up with so much foam that a regular coffee mug wouldn't hold it all. So of course I served our drinks in a mason jar. Thus, the mason jar was twice useful to this cause. Here are today's not so flat vanilla lattes:

Latte Recipe (for one serving)
2 oz brewed espresso
3 tbsp vanilla syrup
8 oz milk, frothed and heated (skim works much better than 2% or whole milk)

Vanilla Syrup Recipe
3/4 cup sugar
3/8 cup water
1/4 - 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
(This made enough syrup for 4-5 drinks)






I like the cross-section view that the jars give as well. We needed spoons to get all the foam out! So, all in all, I was pleased. Of course, I will keep tweaking Cafe Date. Perhaps next time I'll aim for something along these lines:

But for now, the dining table will have to do...