When Life Gives You Lemons …

… eat ice cream!

My introduction to lemon ice cream – real ice cream, not sorbet – happened at Vancouver’s Pacific Centre Mall in 1985. Ter and I were over for yet another rock concert and always spent time shopping whenever we were in the city. It was also our first encounter with a Baskin-Robbins outlet. Never had we seen such a variety of flavours in one freezer. The options are countless these days, but back then, choosing from 31 was mind-boggling. I don’t recall what Ter picked, but they had me at “Lemon Mousse”.

It was creamy and sweet and tart and I’ve always remembered it. Perhaps memory has embellished the delight in taste and texture, but no matter. It took decades for me to find another ice cream joint that featured lemon anything other than sorbet. Not that I have anything against dairy-free, but that B-R Lemon Mousse was unlike anything I had ever tasted. I never got past it.

Artisan ice cream shops are ubiquitous forty years later. I have steered clear of dairy for some years on account of arthritic flares, but I have consumed more ice cream in the last two months than I’ve eaten in decades. The summer’s been hot, I’ve been happy, and exploring the neighbourhood has revealed an alarming number of small-batch retailers in dangerous proximity, each of which features a unique spin on lemon ice cream.

Better Acres “Italian Lemon” set the bar last year. Then I discovered Parachute’s “Lemon Cream” this summer. Last week, I happened on 49 Below’s “Lemon Swirl” and I am here to tell you that one knocked the others out of the park. I’d never have gotten through the ridiculously misnamed single scoop without Ter’s help – it was huge – and once the burn wore off, my tongue hurt like it had been sandpapered but, oh man, was it worth it!

Best of all? They sell it by the pint! And online! Click!

Christmas Kryptonite

 

Lookee what Ter brought home the other day! Oh, joy! Hallelujah, let the church say “Amen”, Christmas candy is now available – and November has hardly begun!

Remember when holiday treats were truly limited editions? When eggnog, candy canes, boxes of chocolates and tins of cookies were on the shelves for maybe four weeks before Christmas? When the sublime blend of white chocolate and peppermint candy had yet to be invented? I remember those days. I don’t lament them much, either, but whoever decided to mix crushed candy canes into melted white chocolate deserves some sort of culinary—nay, Nobel—award.

Something magical has happened this year. For the first time since the Before Time, I’m getting excited about Christmas. The neighbours behind us put twinkle lights on their balcony a few days before Hallowe’en—it was probably to celebrate Diwali, but I was thrilled with the multi-coloured light show anyway. Eggnog lattes are now available at my coffee haunt, even ahead of Starbucks; I haven’t indulged as yet, but I won’t wait until December to have one. Ter and I are talking about holiday baking again. I’ve listened to Christmas tunes on two occasions so far and she’s confessed to playing holiday discs in the car. And we may be out of our minds in this smaller apartment, but this year, we’re tackling the Big Tree without caring if it overwhelms the living room.

But it started with the Candy Cane Kisses. I don’t even like Hershey’s chocolate, but these little bonbons are deadly addictive (something in the toxic red food colouring, perchance?). Their similarity to my favourite ice cream ever – peppermint candy – could explain it; maybe it’s the refreshing punch of peppermint in the sweet white chocolate. Or the textural contrast of crunchy bits in melty surroundings. Don’t know, don’t care. Get ’em while you can. They might be here early, but they sure won’t stay late.

Think I’ll have just one more ...

Rockets - Yeah!

 

Now that Hallowe’en is a thing again – okay, maybe it never stopped, but during two years of COVID restrictions, it seems like everything did – the age-old debate is back: what’s the best Hallowe’en candy?

Tiny chocolate bars don’t count. First, they’re a given favourite. The only argument is which one is the best. Mars bars were tops for a while, then Crunchies took the prize, now I’m a huge (or would be, if I ate every one I see) Aero fan. Second, tiny chocolate bars are ubiquitous, a fact of life and school lunches in this era of dwindling seasonal treats. By “dwindling”, I mean much of what was once only available at select times of the year is now available all year, so it’s hard to get excited about a clutch of little chocolate bars when whole boxes of the darned things are in stores 24/7. The manufacturers try to make them special by issuing scary shapes in spooky wrappers, but I doubt the kids are fooled either.

I digress. Sort of. Back to the best of the Hallowe’en treat bag:

Stick gum? No, thanks.

Chiclets? Better than stick, but still, no thanks.

Bubble gum? Geez, how many kinds of gum are there, anyway?

Lollipops? Meh. The green ones are okay, but ...

Molasses kisses? A taste I neither appreciated nor acquired until adulthood. Now I love them, dark sticky ones and whipped chewy airy ones alike. If only they were available all year.

Apples? Straight to compost.

Skittles, Starbursts and Sour Patch Kids didn’t exist when I was trick or treating, nor did gummies of any ilk. I like gummy Life Savers now, but am lukewarm to the others.

Nope, my second favourite treat as a Hallowe’en kid was a roll of Rockets. Hands down, the best candy in the bag. Pure sugar with no real flavour, they are little buttons of pure sweet/tart delight – very much a mini-version of the SweetTarts I also loved in childhood. I could get SweetTarts at the corner store year-round, but Rockets were strictly a Hallowe’en thing. I hoarded them like a miser, they were off-limits in trades unless I had a friend who disliked them, in which case I’d happily surrender whatever my buddy wanted in return. If I ate them one at a time, I could make a roll of Rockets last far longer than a little box of Smarties.

A strange aside: I hear Rockets are called Smarties in the States. Their version of Canadian Smarties must be the sub-standard M&Ms ... but that’s a debate for another time.

Nowadays Rockets, like tiny chocolate bars, are available all year – if you know where to get ’em. And I do ... or Ter does, and so a constant supply resides in our kitchen pantry. I have a stash in my desk drawer at the office, too, and it’s not unusual to hear the telltale wrapper crinkling at some time between eleven and one on any given day, be it a weekday or a weekend, week in, week out, month in, month out, all blessed year. My favourite Hallowe’en candy is a seasonal treat no more.

I can’t decide if I’m happy about that, or a little sad.

Soul Food?

 

Quitting sugar is a bit like quitting booze. It can be awkward in a social situation. My office tea buddy is a treat freak who can rationalize herself into committing any form of dietary misdemeanour. “I’ve earned it” or “I deserve it” are two of her favourites, and she is notorious – or was, in the before times – for enticing co-workers with bowls of chips, boxes of cookies, and plates of gourmet doughnuts cut into bite-sized pieces (aka “quarters”). She’d often IM me with alluring details of a new chocolate bar she discovered at lunch, ending with a coy “Want some?” that I rarely resisted.

In truth, my powers of resistance are stronger than everything except my desire to please, so when the offer of some new sugary discovery was extended, I accepted to be polite. I do hate to disappoint people.

Still, when I recently told her that I’m off sugar for health reasons, she made all the right supportive noises before she said, “Well, the time will come when you have to surrender—just once—for the sake of your soul.”

Treats are comfort food, and comfort food is comforting for a reason. It’s emotionally gratifying. Soul food, as it were, being good for your soul because it feels good, period.

Oh, but wait a minute. As I understand it, my soul resides in but is not part of the compostable container. Being the spark of divinity that binds me to the Universe and all living things, it’s the one thing I will take with me when I leave. My soul needs attention, sure, but not in the form of food. It needs no physical nourishment. It certainly isn’t prone to sugar cravings that will wreck my mind and my body for hours after a treat is consumed in seconds. It just isn’t.

What is, however, is the sneaky little part of my brain that resides just out of sight behind my ears. Known to neurologists as the amygdale, it’s been described by one expert as “the toddler in the room” where demands, tantrums, addictions, and primal emotions like fear and anger reside. It’s the part of my makeup that claims comfort from food and will say anything to get it. Including “I’ve earned this”, “I deserve this”, or “My soul needs this”.

Clever, eh? How it uses first-person logic to negotiate and get its way? It actually tries to trick me into believing that a brownie will make me feel better when in truth that brownie will a) not taste as good as I remember and b) make me sluggish and crabby for the rest of the day. Why would my soul want to feel like crap? Well, it doesn’t. My soul knows what’s good for me and my body, and my prefrontal cortex (aka “the parent in the room”) concurs. It’s the voice that says,

“Away with you, Princess Amygdale. You’re busted.”

Food Porn XIII

"Chovocado Pudding"

The pursuit of drug-free pain management continues. I stopped taking Aleve every other night after a scary bout of what might have been food poisoning but also checked every box for overuse of non-prescription meds. I don’t even take it occasionally, anymore. Once bitten, you know.

But once bitten, what was the alternative to my little blue pill? Once again, I looked to my diet. COVID restrictions have helped in one area: “take out” means more than a bacon cheeseburger for pickup. Now it means “prepare to be taken out for a day after eating take out”. It’s amazing how quickly my body responds to inflammatory foods, and tasty as that burger may be, it’s also loaded with salt, fat, dairy, and whatever the steer was fed before it became a beef patty. I’m basically shrink-wrapped for twenty-four hours after consuming one.

I also live with a food narc. Ter is a strong believer in food as medicine; she has a ton of books on the subject and has made it her personal mission to feed me all the right stuff. But she can’t control what I choose to consume on my own watch.

So on the morning when I announced I was giving up sugar, she almost wept with relief. The preceding few weeks had been fraught with pain, frustration, and desperation as my symptoms worsened and I stubbornly continued to ignore my inner voice. In fact, I had almost defiantly begun hoarding treats: muffins, cookies, granola bars, candy, chocolate – if sugar was the primary ingredient, I bought it. Finally, after a particularly rough weekend, I surrendered. Consulting one of Ter’s anti-inflammatory books, I determined that honey and maple syrup could stay on the list, but everything else had to go. No sugar? No problem.

And so to the “food porn” part of this post. I would never in a million years have imagined that a phenomenal chocolate pudding could result from five ingredients that exclude milk, cream, melted chocolate, sugar, or any of the other items on my verboten foods list. But it can, and it does:

One ripe avocado

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

2.5 to 3 tablespoons maple syrup

Pinch of salt

¼ to 1/3 cup almond or coconut milk (your preference)

Put everything into a food processor and blitz until smooth and creamy. (Note: the amount of almond milk depends on the size of the avocado and how creamy you like your pud.) Refrigerate for a couple of hours – it’s really good cold – and enjoy within a few days. Word is that it spoils fairly quickly, but mine has never lasted that long.

I dare yours to do the same.

Short Notice

 

Not always, I hope!

For a woman who touts the practice of present moment mindfulness, I sure miss a lot. I seldom miss the obvious (I hope) and I suspect most of what does escape my notice stems from knowing all is well in my world rather than indifference to my surroundings.

It’s a running joke between Ter and me that I don’t notice things. Buildings, for instance. I distinctly recall walking up Georgia Street in Vancouver and Ter later asking me about some detail or other on one of the plate glass skyscrapers we had passed. For the life of me, I could not picture the building she was talking about, so had to plead the fifth for an answer. That was years ago, but I can cite more recent examples of less glaring omissions.

Take the box of Haagen-Daz bars lodged in the freezer door. Due to sugar sensitivities, Ter has to eat even a mini ice cream bar in two sittings. Sometimes we’ll split one between us, but it’s not unusual for me to spy a cling-wrapped morsel one day awaiting its demise on another. During this past summer, however, we realized we were consuming way too much dairy/sugar/naughty treats and stopped replenishing our stock. After we decided to cut back, I glanced into the box and noted a pair of bars remaining. A few days later, Ter confessed to finishing one of them. “That leaves the other one, then?” I asked.

She actually looked sheepish. “No, they’re both gone.”

The little muncher had stealthily nibbled away until the last of the bars were gone, but I had been in the freezer that morning and was certain the box had still been there. Another box appeared some days later, and I had to ask her when she’d bought it because I was sure the space had been empty that morning. To my relief, the answer was “Today.” Yet I can almost guarantee if the ice cream confession hadn’t occurred, I could not have said when the Haagen Daz bars became dry garlic pork ribs.

These are tiny examples, of course. Dozens more would be listed if I could remember them all, but it seems that my not noticing things has taken root in Ter’s subconscious. One night she dreamed we were stuck on a hill behind traffic at a standstill. I was driving, so Ter got out to see what the holdup was. Whatever the snarl was, it cleared while she was still investigating, and I drove away without her.

At first, dream-Ter couldn’t believe it ... until her little voice said, “I bet she hasn’t noticed I’m not in the car!”

I would like to express my offense and outrage at being so callously perceived by the one I love most, but I can’t. The notion is not as absurd as it is possible. Not likely, I must insist, but possible.

*sigh*

Food Porn XI

“Ter’s Granola”

*sung to the tune of My Sharona*

What to do at breakfast time, breakfast time?

What will fuel me up when there’s no granola?

Toast or cereal is fine, either’s fine

But I’d really rather have Ter’s granola.

In a bowl, or a jar, with some fruit, strain some yogurt

Spoon it on for the crunch, for the sweet and the yum,

Yum yum yum, aye aye, whoa!

T-T-T-Ter’s granola

Ooo, the level’s getting’ low, getting’ low

When’s she gonna make me some more granola?

If she makes a batch to go, I say, “No!”

I don’t wanna share my granola!

Toasted oats, ginger bits, chopped pecans; shred coconut

Cinnamon, just a touch, for some heat with the sweet

Yum yum yum aye aye whoa!

T-T-T-Ter’s granola

T-T-T-Ter’s granola

Ooooo …

… Ter’s granola!

Stuff It

I love single servings!

When I was a kid, the only time Mum cooked a turkey was at Christmas. That means we had stuffing once a year, and I’m here to tell you, though Mum cooked a beauty every time that I remember, the bird was not the star of the family holiday feast. Mum didn’t go in for the homemade sausage/cranberry/chestnut/kitchen sink dressing; for expediency’s sake she knocked out a box of Stove Top and we were fine with it.

“Stove Top or potatoes?” The answer was a no brainer in our house:

Both!

However, if forced at gunpoint to choose one over the other, my younger younger brother once said he’d be content with a bowl of stuffing and gravy—and I completely, heartily, vehemently agree. And while one might argue that a boxed stuffing mix is cheating, you can’t really call it substandard because the bread should be a little stale anyway and most of the herbs in a homemade version are as dry as they are in the commercial product. Fresh herbs just don’t pack the same punch; not in stuffing, anyway.

Mind you, my older sister made a batch from scratch at Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, and I would have devoured the whole pan except there were seven other people at the table and it would have been rude not to share.

So this weekend, Ter was debating about veggies to go with our Easter dinner. “You’re doing sprouts, right?” I asked, because we love Brussels sprouts and apparently can’t have them too often.

“Oh yeah,” she concurred, “but instead of carrot/turnip mash, I’ve got a couple of squash that I haven’t used, so maybe the acorn ...?”

That’s a lot of cooking and I try to spare her where I can. “I’ll forfeit the mashed potatoes for squash,” I said.

She knows I’ve never met a spud I haven’t liked, so she was sufficiently dubious. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Because it’s really all about the stuffing.”

Stuffing with gravy, sprouts, squash, and a side of turkey.

Happy Easter.

Taste Buds

Ter and I are standing at the market deli counter. I’m holding an eggnog tart in a plastic clamshell from the bakery department. She is studying the variety of salads—and I mean variety. It’s not just coleslaw and potato salad anymore. Now there’s Mediterranean chick pea, curried carrot, twice backed potato, Asian slaw, three bean, Persian lentil, pesto pasta, you name it, there’s a bowl of it behind the glass.

“I love their beet salad,” Ter says to me.

I frown, unsure that I’ve heard her correctly. “Beet?”

She nods. I glance at the selection and, yes, there is indeed a beet salad. Heaven knows what’s in it besides beets, but I don’t ask.

“I got some the other day,” Ter continues. “It was so good, I ate it all for breakfast.”

I know. Beets for breakfast? Ewwww. Except for two things: one, Ter loves beets and two, she’s not a fan of conventional breakfast food. I’m the oatmeal/waffle/ granola-and-yogurt/eggs-and-toast half of the unit. During the thirty-plus years I’ve known her, Ter has preferred cold pizza to pancakes and leftover Chinese to Cheerios before nine in the morning. In fact, though we share the same passion for Italian food (who doesn’t like Italian food?), her culinary taste generally runs in the opposite direction to mine. She doesn’t enjoy cereal.  She’ll down a bowl of popcorn while I’m chomping cookies. Sweets are not her thing. Carbs used to be, but not so much now unless you count the chilli rice chips she snacks on while I’m snarfing a brownie or a butter tart with my afternoon cup of sweet creamy black tea. And let’s not even talk tea. Okay, let’s. Stash’s Earl Grey with double bergamot is her morning starter; after that, she might have a second cup of the same flavour at elevenses, though she occasionally deviates to a rogue Red Rose instead – and that’s it. She’s toyed with mint herbals in the past, but nothing has ever stuck. So the tea cupboard overflows with my addle-minded collection. The freezer is jammed with cake, cookies and tarts on my behalf. I tend the chocolate bin and Ter keeps the dishwasher stocked with a selection of corn, potato and rice chips. She likes wine, I drink liqueur. I can do breakfast for dinner, she does dinner for breakfast. Neither one of us can eat like vegetarian for more than a couple of days before we must have meat. Our tastes complement each other perfectly.

Back at the market, we get to the counter. Ter puts in the order, and the clerk starts loading a bin of bean salad. That’s when I realize I’d misheard. She’d said “beans”, not “beets.” Still, you can see why I wasn’t surprised even if I was wrong.

She makes a killer curried lentil/rice salad. It’s loaded with raisins and slivered almonds and carrot and green onion and it tastes like middle eastern heaven. I eat it warm or cold for lunch, with chicken or without, and it’s a kickass side with grilled salmon for dinner. Last time she made it, Ter told me that it’s awesome with a fried egg on top, too. “I had it like that for breakfast, today,” she said.

Of course she did.

Cold Comfort

The creators of my favourite ice cream long ago confessed that the name Haagen-Daaz has no meaning. It’s not Danish or Norwegian or Swedish for anything.

Okay, but it means something to me. Apparently, it means comfort food.

Truthfully, Ter and I almost always have one flavour in the freezer, doled out by the egg spoon after a particularly spicy dinner, but the current stash of four flavours plus a box of bars suggests a deeper purpose than mere avoidance of acid reflux. Pictured is the second round of the summer just past; by July 31, we’d already blown through three tubs and a box of minis. Can you say stressed?

I did more than mainline H-D this summer. I drank tea lattes by the super-hot, extra foamy vat. I continually tested the limits of my GF sensitivity with pizza crust, pie crust, cookies and toast made from real bread. I emptied two bottles of cinnamon vanilla Baileys and rediscovered the joy of Amarula-laced Red Rose (or, more accurately, Amarula laced with Red Rose). I was so consumed by grief that I stopped caring about what I consumed. Sympathy and support could only do so much while I struggled to maintain a semblance of normal in a world gone severely abnormal. I wanted to feel better. I wanted comfort. So I gave myself permission to eat what I wanted when I wanted, and if that was a bag of Cheetos for dinner, so be it.

It’s not surprising that what I eat to help myself feel better actually makes me feel worse. Wheat curdles my thought process and gives me headaches. Milk in great abundance inflames both joints and ligaments. Wheat and dairy together ignite the stomach pain that Ter jokingly refers to as “gas giants”. Too many starchy carbs congest my sinuses and make me really sleepy. And sugar? Hey, I can quit that anytime I like, wink wink.

I have to shape up if I want to feel more like myself again. If I want the strength to create a new normal, if I want to embrace my life and kickstart my bright and shiny future, I had better cool it with the naughty nummies. Ter has made it her personal mission to ensure I get enough protein in a nutritionally-balanced diet, but she can’t watch me every millisecond of every day and I’m not so scared of her that I won’t pop that box of Smarties when she’s not around. Which means it’s up to me. What do I want more? To feel better right now, or to feel better, period?

Exactly how cold is that comfort?

PS, I Love You

Ter loves the fall so much that if she was a Spice Girl, she’d be Pumpkin Spice.

Me, I like pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, pumpkin custard, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin quick bread (GF, ovvvvv course), and the word itself. If I had a Mini, it would be Flyer orange with a vanity plate reading “PUMKIN”. As for the perennial autumn favourite, ye olde pumpkin spice latte/chai/what-have-you, I confess, it’s not the spice so much as its heralding of the season that brightens my world. Whether I order one or not, and it’s generally not, I’m always happy to welcome it when it comes.

So how was it that I opened my email on August 27 to find advisories from two of my regular coffee haunts proclaiming the return of the pumpkin spice latte? Make no mistake. I wanted the end of Summer 2018 more desperately than anyone, but even then, August 27??? Really, you money-grubbing corporate giants? You couldn’t wait for the Labour Day weekend before launching the harvest on a society still preparing for back to school? Even Mother Nature was in denial about the timing: who wants a warming spice drink when the park bench is hot beneath your butt and you’re still working on your tan? Surely pumpkin spice can wait until the first day of autumn!

And that’s (kind of) my point. The last day of summer, for me, falls not on the equinox in September, but on August 31. It doesn’t even matter if Labour Day happens after my birthday; September 1 is the first day of fall.

It happens almost overnight. Mornings dawn later, cool and crisp, yet the jacket you must wear to work is flung over your arm on the way home. The sky is a vibrant, burnished blue. The sun casts golden light on trees suddenly ablaze with colour. Twilight settles sooner, but gently, accompanied by the first whiff of wood smoke from neighbourhood chimneys. Apples scent the air where no apple trees exist – figure that one out! – and suddenly it’s too cold for your sandals. By the time the equinox arrives around the 22nd, we’re well into the autumnal groove ... but that groove does not, must not, begin until after August 31.

Food Porn X

“Comfort Food”

It’s a crappy rainy day. I have a cold. It’s not at the “I want my mum” stage, but it’s enough to warrant postponing a sister lunch that will likely not happen now until mid-October.

When the majority of us are still working (but not bitter), it can take that long for a lunch date to travel from inception to implementation.

Anyway, this morning Ter suggested mince and tatties for dinner tonight. “Comfort food,” she said, though I needed no convincing. Mince and tatties is my childhood favourite of all time, especially when paired with ...

“Rhubarb crumble for dessert!” I croaked.

“I can get you a can of custard at the shops,” Ter added.

I threw back my head. “Oh, God, yes!”

It so happens that I made a strawberry-rhubarb crumble yesterday, but was too sick to eat any of it. A fortuitous circumstance, if you ask me. Pour a little Ambrosia brand cukkie over warm crumble and be transported to a bliss unlike any other in existence.

Once I came down from my foodie orgasm, I said, “Check the guide! Is there a hockey game on?” Because mince and tatties are our traditional “hockey night dinner” and food is almost always associated with some emotional gratification. Plus, the World Hockey Championship starts this weekend and we’re in hockey withdrawal. Ter grabbed the remote and yep, Canada faces off against the Czech Republic at 5:00 p.m. We are set!

What is it about gloomy weather that inspires a desire for, let’s face it, stodgy food? We call it “comfort food”, but it’s really all about the stodge. Hot soup, beef stew, meat-pie-and-potatoes—okay, anything with potatoes—followed by sweet creamy puddings are probably the worst combo for our compostable containers, yet a grilled salmon Caesar salad just won’t cut it when I feel like s***. On a rainy day, I am compelled to bake, to scent the house with the perfume of burnt sugar and chocolate, toasted pecans and cinnamon, warm fall fruits and ginger. Ter, having less of a sweet tooth, craves the aromas of roasting meat, bubbling gooey cheese, and hearty herby broth. Tonight’s menu won’t do anything to help my congestion, but do I care?

I probably should, but I don’t.

*cough cough*

Food Porn IX

“Whopper Wednesday”

Remember the Pepsi Challenge? Folks were asked to choose between two colas whose labels were hidden. Those who chose Pepsi got on TV and those who chose Coke were never heard from again.

An impromptu malt ball challenge was recently held at work. It came up as a result of the salt/sugar snackies I put out for my co-workers each day—there is always a bowl of chips, cheezies or pretzels, and a smaller bowl of fruit chews, chocolate or gummies. I try to accommodate preferences, but one day I put out my favourite Maltesers and caused a controversy.” These aren’t as good as Whoppers,” my ungrateful minion declared. “Whoppers are better.”

“You mean the cheapo crap malt balls from when we were kids?” I asked, duly offended.

“Yeah,” she replied. She made a face. “These are too oily and not malty enough.”

That’s stupid, I thought. According to my palate, Maltesers are light, crunchy, and plenty malty. “We should do a challenge,” my minion suggested.

Damn straight. Confident of a landslide Malteser victory, I set about preparing the test lab. Two identical bowls. An equal number of malt balls in each. Shiny, uniform Maltesers on the left, muddy cheapo Whoppers on the right. On appearance alone, the Maltesers would win. My minion and I invited three people in our division to take the challenge.

All three liked the muddy cheapo Whoppers better, but my malt ball motto is “never say die.”

Time to expand the target audience.

I knew for a fact that my tea fairy would side with me, so off we went to her corner of the floor. When she wasn’t at her desk, we pigeon-holed the co-op student and asked her to take the challenge instead.

She picked the Whopper.

My tea fairy Treena rounded the corner. “You missed the challenge!” my minion crowed.

Bewildered and despairing at a missed opportunity for treats, Treena looked at me. “What challenge?”

“Maltesers versus Whoppers,” I replied.

She scoffed. “That’s no challenge. Maltesers are better.”

Yes! High-five, Treena!

My minion folded her arms. “Sore loser.”

“Not really,” I replied. “Since everyone prefers the cheapo crappy malt balls, it won’t cost me so much to feed y’all.”

But sometimes the kids eat what Mum likes because Mum likes it and she doesn’t care about them. A few weeks later, I put out Maltesers. My minion popped one and rudely interrupted my conversation with the office manager. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “These are the losers!”

I arched a high brow. “You mean Maltesers? So they are.”

Her brows lowered. “Even though the majority of people prefer Whoppers?”

“And no one has ever gone broke underestimating the taste of the general public,” I retorted.

I may go broke trying to elevate the taste of my public, though. It’s a hard thing to admit defeat, so any malt balls I’ve put out lately have been Maltesers.

Food Porn IX

“Achey Bakey Heart”

Wee sis and I used to bake when we were bored. As teenagers in the sticks, where bus service was thrice weekly and all on Monday morning, we baked a lot. We discovered that the quickest way to get chocolate chip cookies is to spread the batter in a sheet pan, bake for twenty-five minutes, and cut into squares. Warm from the pan, these bar cookies were comfort in your palm.

The best smell ever? Bread baking.

The second best smell ever? Ter’s shortbread baking. The recipe is actually my mother’s, which she got from a neighbour in the aforementioned sticks. A perennial favourite at Christmas, since going gluten free, we’ve discovered that these melting little vanilla/almond-scented morsels are better than the original version, so they’re now a teatime staple. Ter baked a fresh batch for me just last week … and another will be necessary in the not-too-distant future. They’re a perfect complement to my Blenz Mumbai Chai, now served at home.

On a cool misty day, I am almost compelled to bake. Muffins, quick breads, scones, drop cookies; on any given grey day, I can be found in the kitchen, setting up the mise en place for some sort of emotional gratification.

Today, it was gingersnaps. An old AP flour recipe taking the GF route and it worked like a hot damn! The cookies are crunchy, gingery, and I am so confident that they will fool a lab rat that I’m taking some to work tomorrow. My motivation for baking sprang from waking to a foggy morning, plus the fact that I need a foil for the teatime shortbread/chai combo. Aside from hot chocolate, gingersnaps are best accompanied by either gyokuro imperial green or Yorkshire Gold black. Or, as pictured above, a glass of cold milk.

Yum!

A Literary Feast

Since the Flyers didn’t make the playoffs, HBO has given me a reason to live through the next two months: season 5 of Game of Thrones premieres tonight at 8:00 p.m. Hats and horns! I hear rumours that the plot diverts from the novels this year, which it pretty well must, as the fifth book was published in 2011, the show has been roaring along, and the sixth book is still pending. I’ve also heard that GRRM has stepped away from the TV series to focus more intently on getting the darned novel done, and has blessed the show’s producers to take the story where they will.

Ter and I are planning our annual Thrones feast for the first episode. This year it’s honeyed chicken and buttered veggies, with frozen blueberries with sweet cream for afters. The recipes are taken from A Feast of Ice and Fire, a way cool book even if you don’t cook because it features quotes from the written series. The cookbook’s authors – foodies and chefs themselves – pored through the first four volumes (Dance with Dragons hadn’t been published yet) in search of meal descriptions and set out to create “real” versions of the fantasy food. Turned out that much of the fare in GRRM’s books has reasonable facsimiles in history, so the cookbook includes both the historical and modernized versions of each recipe. Lazy bum that I am, I find many of the modern versions too labour intensive, so the sweet cream for the blueberries is actually a medieval custard known as crème batard, or “bastard cream”, which is ironic considering that it’s a dish served at the Wall, where Ned Stark’s illegitimate son is in residence.

Okay, this post may be too specific for a non-Thrones reader. To recap, one of my favourite shows, based on my favourite work of one of my favourite authors, resumes tonight and I am there. Oh, and the Wall I mentioned? In the novels, it stands seven hundred feet tall, built of ice and snow to keep the terrors of the northern wilds at bay (a fantasy version of Hadrian’s Wall), but believe it or not, there is also a Wall here in Victoria. It stands about seven inches tall and is made of brick. It’s where I have coffee with my wee sister and my boy sister every week; last Thursday, the wee ’un emailed BS and me: “I might be a bit late today; can I just meet you guys at the Wall?”

Food Porn VIII

“Go With the Pho”

“Neddie, have a noodle.”

So says the villainous Hercules Grytpype-Thynne to our hapless hero, Ned Seagoon, in the Goon Show’s China Story. This line actually pops up in many of the GS scripts, and in some of the Greig family banter as well. It’s one of my favourites because I love noodles. I had no idea how much I love them until I discovered pho.

Pronounced “pha” (I think), it’s a Vietnamese minestrone, a gorgeous collection of meat, scallions, crispy-fried onions and rice noodles served in a stunningly simple broth alongside a plate of bean sprouts, sweet basil, lime and sliced jalapeno peppers. I use the lime and basil, squirt in a fair amount of sriracha chili sauce, and leave the sprouts to Ter. I always order it when trying out a new Vietnamese restaurant; like the bacon/cheese at a burger joint, noodles are my yardstick.

Restaurants come and go so fast that it’s best not to get attached to any one dish, though it can also be said that noodles are alive and well in Victoria. Over the years I’ve had good noodles and not-so-good noodles, but I may have had the best noodles so far last Saturday, at the Green Leaf Bistro near City Hall. I ordered the plain beef brisket and OMG was it good; so good that I want to go back and try something (everything) else. Ter’s standard is lemongrass chicken and the Green Leaf delivered there, too. We’ve been forced to expand our territory due to fire, new management, renovations, relocations, you name it, our regular haunts have suffered it. I tend to stick with a place I like, so it’s been good to try other versions of the staple, though it’s a bit like Goldilocks in search of “just right”. One was too spicy, one was too bland, one skimped on the beef, but the Green Leaf checked every box.

What a relief. I’ve been noodle-free for almost a month and I generally can’t go more than two weeks without them. Truly. A tub-sized bowl will fuel me up for a fortnight; after that, I start thinking, hmmm, could go for noodles today. Not so long ago, such a craving could only be sated by Chinese chow mein, so I rarely craved them. Now, on practically every corner,  I can choose between Thai and Vietnamese, where rice noodles rule supreme.

What the pho? Here, have a noodle!

Kombucha Boogie

ginger, cinnamon vanilla, and in progress

Everyone needs a hobby. My latest is brewing kombucha. When I started, I imagined maybe one batch per month. Now I’m “chain-brewing” so my SCOBY is working 24/7 with no compensation.

Right now, I’m drinking the last bottle from two batches ago, have another four bottles infusing, and a fresh batch of starter tea underway. That’s where SCOBY-Doo is presently housed, feeding merrily on the sugars and creating the bubbles that make kombucha so … weird.

Face it, Ru. It’s weird. Really. Who was brave enough (or fool enough) to peel back the gelatinous layer of goo and sample the smelly liquid beneath it? I guess something similar happened in 18^th century France, when Dom Perignon’s batch of white wine went wrong and champagne was born. Kombucha begins with tea, after all, so clearly something else was intended when the discovery was made. Isn’t that usually the way?

SCOBY (“symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast”) is like a sourdough starter and who knows how old mine is? His direct ancestor belongs to my older sister, who got hers from her daughter, whose beastie can probably trace its lineage back to northeastern China where it supposedly all began. And my own SCOBY is a parent as well – I gave our first baby to a buddy whose initial batch is almost ready for bottling.

Green, black, herbal. Spicy, fruity, tangy—the flavours are proving endless and the “happy bugs” are a bonus as I’m dairy-free and no longer eat yogurt. I’m not 100 per cent sure, either, but my power surges seem to have ceased since I stepped up my kombucha consumption …

Food Porn VII

“Feliz Navidachos”

We spend so much time grazing on treats and running around during the holidays that we rarely have an appetite for a proper meal at the designated time. One night last December, Ter and I had no interest in whatever protein she had planned for dinner, so she scrounged up the fixin’s for this magical tray of nachos, so seasonally hued with red pepper and green onion that we christened them “feliz navidachos”.

She makes a killer guacamole, too. On the table with a bowl of salsa, it looks even more festive!

Since that night, we’ve stopped consuming dairy, so cheese is now off the menu. That makes for dead boring nachos; alas, this photo stirred up some fond memories for more than the occasion that spawned them.

Do or Donut

The other day, Ter challenged me to write 700 words about donuts. She was joking; I took her seriously …

Who knew that a lump of sweet dough, deep-fried and dunked in cinnamon sugar, would become a cultural icon? That a plethora of sweet sticky syrupy centres could be housed in fluffy golden goodness? That crushed peanuts and toasted coconut would be so nummy glued with glaze to a treat resembling a tender and crumbly Life Saver? Or that a donut shop named for a hockey player would successfully thwart a coffee empire’s nefarious plot to possess every city street corner and mall outlet in the country?

Only in Canada, you say?

Damn straight.

Canadians are—or once were—universally known as donut junkies. We poke fun at ourselves because of it. Countless comedy skits are set in donut shops. Need a cop right now? Look for squad cars at the nearest Tim Horton’s. Paper cups bearing the TH logo figure at every community rink. The chain, if not the donut itself, is a part of our national identity.

Of all the donuts I sampled in my wild and indiscriminate youth, Tim’s produced the tastiest and most varied morsels around. Honey-glazed yeast, white powdered jelly, maple dip, sour-cream-cake-rolled-in-sugar, vanilla-iced-with-sprinkles, caramel apple fritter, walnut or cherry stick; you name it, it’s somebody’s favourite. My preferences fluctuated as I grew up, but my go-to in the gluten days was always sugared raspberry jelly … when it wasn’t Boston Cream. (Pump custard into a running shoe and I’ll probably eat it.)

In the days before cars had cup holders, Ter and I would buy 20 Timbits, park the box on the console between us, and eat ’em like chips while we drove. Since three and a half donut holes equal a single donut, we could indulge in a variety trio apiece and suffer no more than the usual sugar crash down the road. She was all about the honey glaze, I preferred the cake (but never chocolate. Mysteriously, chocolate cake donuts do not cut it). Our mutual favourite, however, was the legendary Dutchie: a deliciously dense ball o’ dough studded with raisins and crusted in a sugar glaze. Created in 1964, it stayed in action until February 2014, when the Dutchie Timbit was discontinued due to “low popularity”.

I can’t imagine why.

Tim’s opened a shop downtown a few years ago, and bakeries in a ten block radius suddenly stopped selling donuts. I guess they thought the competition for donut consumption would crush them. Well, heck. They should also have quit selling sandwiches, soup, chili and oatmeal, too, because over the years those items have found their way onto Tim’s menu, along with bagels, muffins and breakfast sandwiches. One upon a time, the showcase displayed a mesmerizing array of glistening chocolate frost, chunky nut crunch and plump sugar jellies, but nowadays you need a GPS just to find the crullers.

I don’t remember the last time I saw a Tim’s commercial actually pushing donuts. The latest campaign was their pumpkin spice latte, and a p/s donut was placed near the mug, but no mention was made of the donut itself. Then there’s the grilled panini sandwich, lasagne casserole and the sirloin roast baguette. No wonder the Dutchie lost popularity. People have forgotten they ever existed!

Why do I care? I shouldn’t. GF donuts, if they exist, are probably used to anchor the buoys provided to tie up your sailboat offshore. They won’t be comparable to the real deal at any rate. And, despite a powerful craving during my gluten withdrawal, I was hardly a donut addict. Who am I to dictate what goes on a fast food menu?

Of course, donuts are not exclusive to the Great White North: A box of Krispy Kremes was once smuggled across the border by a co-worker and everyone on staff pounced on it, eager to see how the American version fared against our homegrown standard. One bite was enough for me: it was neither krispy nor kremey, just leaden, soggy and diabetes-inducing sweet. That sealed it. No other donut, be it disguised as loukoumades in Greek, lokma in Turkish, jalebi in Pakistani or beignet in French, could compare to an old-fashioned cinnamon cake donut from Tim Horton’s.

 

Assuming you can still get one.

Fried Egg Friday

My all-time favourite sandwich has to be fried egg. From the time I was a kid, I’ve loved them: semi-runny yolks, whites crispy-fried in bacon fat, and thick mayo on good white bread. Bond Bond’s bakery here in Victoria makes the perfect white bread, the best I ever tasted, which elevated the relatively simple fried egg sangie to something celestial. In my glutenous glory days, my bi-weekly Friday off regularly featured a killer fried egg sandwich, sometimes with potato chips to poke in the yolk. Culinary heaven.

Alas, those days are gone. I tried it with GF bread and promptly abandoned the notion of creating a reasonable facsimile. Honestly, there are times when substitutes are just not acceptable. Gluten free bread is smaller, far more dense, a lot more fragile, and quite frankly not that great unless it’s toasted first. Toasted, it assumes a similarly crispy-crusty texture and stability that emulates “real” toast well enough to make it an occasional treat. What I can’t figure out, however, is why peanut butter just sits on the surface like a sticky puddle of goo rather than sinking into what tiny pores exist. If my complexion was as smooth as a slice of GF toast, I wouldn’t need makeup.

It took me more than a year to find a solution to the fried egg dilemma, a solution that existed long before I went gluten free though I didn’t see it at the time:

The next best thing to the perfect fried egg sandwich is a tiger’s eye – white bread with a hole cut in the center, fried in bacon fat with an egg cracked into the middle. Since GF bread toasts up so well, logic suggests that it will fry up equally so, yes?

Yes! Eureka, it’s not the monarch of all sandwiches, but it’ll do.

Today is my last day of solo vacation. I have a week remaining, but Ter is also on vacation starting tomorrow, and while we won’t be living in each other’s pockets the whole time, my run of the house will require, well, clothing. I got the first scene of the new story done yesterday, plan to write more today, plus catch two more episodes of Orphan Black … which may or may not have inspired the theme for said new story. It’s not about clones, but there is a theory out there that everyone has a double. If that’s so, says I, why not more than one, and do they all exist in this dimension?

Enquiring minds want to know … but can certainly wait until after lunch.