Beets!

This is not a recipe. This is a how-to.

Christine's "I-want-to-be-damn-sure-my-husband-won't-complain-about-the-lack-of-salad" beets:

Break the roots off the beet greens. Keep for later use (unless you already used them, in which case this step is already done).

Wash the beet greens - they're really flat, so I didn't sweat this too much, just rubbed the whole mass of them together.

Grab the cleaver, and make any neighbours who pass by glad that they're not beet greens. Repeat with some garlic. (I laid the beet greens with the stems in the same direction, and cut every 3-4 cm, so the stems are in pieces, and the leaves are in strips. I used a couple of tablespoons of garlic).

Jam everything in a casserole and steam until done.

As it turns out there might be something to the recipe in the Joy, it looks like frying it with bacon fat would have worked well. (I'm aware that the recipe calls for using actual bacon, but let's be realistic).

I know you have a reputation, but...

Ok geese. Bear in mind that you are known for tasting good. In fact, a certain faculty of engineering legend is a legend in part because one of you were turned into his Easter dinner. I know that you are known for not having sense, but when I get within a half metre of you, you really shouldn't wait for me to look directly at you and go

"You look like dinner!"

before you start to slowly shuffle off. This also holds true for you not getting up when I walk next to you, carrying a heavy weight. If I need to remind you that you're dinner, I'm going to be right before too long.

I think I need to look into how to clean birds...

Correct me if I'm wrong...

But I think it's misleading to title an article Vegetarian Diet 'Weakens Bones' when it turns out that lacto-ovo vegetarians have bone density which is basically the same as that of meat eaters.

I think that the really sad part is that I had just assumed that this was the case before I read the article. I was prepared for the possibility that the small bones that meat eaters ingest (recommended as source of calcium in my lactose-free cookbook) make a really big difference in bone density. I was, however, expecting that someone had misread the statistics and then given the article a bad name. I think I'm too cynical.

Lime-flavoured Pancakes

I can explain. Really, I can.

It started innocently enough. I was intending to follow the recipe in one of our wedding cookbooks. Well... except that I wanted to add raisins and chocolate chips to the pancakes. I mixed the dry ingredients. And that's when it started. Because of my milk allergy I use soy milk instead of milk. Which, as far as I'm concerned doesn't really count as a change most of the time.

Because soy milk only comes in small cartons, I tend to like mixing it from soy milk powder (aka soy flour, apologies to anyone who tried using it instead of wheat flour). A trick I discovered was to mix the flour in with the dry ingredients, and then just measure water out for the soy milk. I've never had too much liquid doing this. What does get really odd is when the recipe calls for buttermilk. I know that soy milk won't sour like milk will, but I have discovered that adding the lemon juice to the milk, or water, will allow me to make recipes that call for buttermilk. Now, this recipe called for buttermilk and, because I was trying to follow the instructions very closely, I decided to use my lemon-and-soy milk trick. But when it came time to add the lemon juice I discovered that I didn't have any (I think I left some extra in the pantry when I moved out that I had intended to keep, hence me being convinced I had some). Not having lemon juice isn't a big problem. You can also use white vinegar. The white vinegar had the same problem as the baking soda. I had some. But it was for cleaning.

I was rapidly running out of options. Had I properly checked for ingredients beforehand, I could have just omitted the baking soda and not added any acid. But who checks for lemon juice? It's a staple. It would be like not having peanut butter. You always have it, because when you start to run low you buy more. Lime juice was chosen as better than any of the vinegars. I didn't really want to risk wine-flavoured pancakes.

So, because I decided to follow the recipe closely (and use a buttermilk substitute instead of just omitting it), I ended up with lime-flavoured pancakes. They were actually really good with the excess of chocolate chips. But this really says a lot about my cooking skills. One of these days...

Rabbit Food!

Well... not literally rabbit food. Just the green crunchy stuff that gets referred to as such. My mom once was picking up food for the rabbit, and a friend commented that "normally when people say they have to buy rabbit food I don't believe them".

Back on topic...

So this evening I was in charge of putting together a salad. Allan had already chopped up some of the interesting stuff. I looked at how much he had done, and then chopped an appropriate amount of mushrooms. And then went for the lettuce...

One dinner for two people, and two packed lunch-size (i.e. huge) salads later, I have come to the realisation that there is no way to make a small salad. In fairness, this was partly because I was using two kinds of lettuce, and not just because I needed to match the lettuce to everything else, but salad is always significantly larger than you expect.

Easter!

So Father Lawrence was talking about Easter baskets yesterday, so I figured I'd share my first ever Easter basket here.

The main part is the babka. None of the rest of the basket takes the better part of a day.

Babka isn't really what I would call health food:





















In fact, the dough looks more like a cake than a bread:


















My mom had some problems with this, and she has since learned that no, you don't make it look like bread dough, because then you end up with a lot of babka, and it's all really dry. Of course, the regular recipe makes a lot too:




















For size:

I ended up using that basket to put a couple of mini babka that I baked in regular cans into, along with an egg, for the priests. Mine went in one I borrowed. It was all very yummy!

Oh, if you want the recipe, I give you my mom's. I take no responsibilty for the offensive images that my dad put up there.

Christine's "This means that there was a recipe" mincemeat

***WARNING! I MADE THIS TODAY, SO IT HASN'T SAT FOR LONG ENOUGH YET***

6 cups ( about three apples), chopped into 1-1.5 cm chunks. Use varieties which will stay firm when you cook them. I actually used four because two were only partial: Cortland, Ida Red, Northern Spy and Granny Smith.

1.5 cups raisins

0.5 cups dried cranberries (this is just in here because my landlady has some, and I wanted some variety, not all raisins)

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts and pecans (straight pecans seemed like it would be a bit much, but I prefer pecans to walnuts)

0.75 cup packed brown sugar (I used golden, but I think that the darker the better)

0.25 cup butter, melted (unsalted, like always when you're baking, but who ever has that around?)

0.5 cups apple juice (or use a mix of apple cider and brandy, but I have neither of those)

zest and juice of half a lemon and half an orange (Don't forget to wash them!)

pinch of salt (skip this because you used salted butter)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

0.5 tsp each: nutmeg (as both cookbooks suggested I used freshly grated/ground nutmeg); allspice; ground cloves

You also need some thickener because I cut back so much on the sugar- I added flour as I was cooking it, but I'd recommend cornstarch (I didn't have any)

Mix all the above ingredients together and bring to a boil. Reduce to low heat and gently simmer until the fruits and nuts are glazed with a thick syrup.


Refrigerate for three days.


What I'm planning on changing for next time: cutting the apples smaller and (hopefully) more evenly; definitely brandy; bump up the spices a lot (particularly the cloves/allspice); add dates

At Least it Wasn't Sobeys

Although it was almost as bad.

I had a short shopping list today - cereal, soy milk (to go with the cereal), peanut butter (my landlady only stocks the sugary kind), some fruit and perhaps check out the tofu products, see what the fruit ones were like (quite affordable, healthy, filling, but a little too sweet and just odd. It grew on me though). It sounds quite simple. At least to me. (And this is considering the fact that tofu is always hidden in the veggie section).

First of all, some self-pity to get out of the way. There was a "veggie block", basically a new kind of fake cheese. And it was cheddar flavoured, which is nice because the one I can get is pretty gross in the cheddar flavour. Unfortunately the second ingredient was casein. Yes, I get fake cheese anyhow (not often), but it's waaaay down on the list for that stuff. So I'm going to mope.
Just so you know.

Now on to the ranting!

I was heading for the soy milk (yes, get the heaviest thing first, that's me, always sensible) and noticed aisle-end displays of peanut butter. These displays weren't the ones directly at the end, more the ones that stick out a bit into the aisle and are at the side. They had crunchy and smooth both, one on either side of the aisle. Now, I'm rather gullable. (I'm sure you've all already figured this out), so I made the assumption that that aisle was the one with peanut butter. Nope, no such luck. Neither was the peanut butter to be found on either side of that aisle (i.e. anywhere NEAR the display). It was about as far as it was possible to be, two aisles away (at the far end of the food aisles), and at the far end of the aisle. At least they had what I wanted (but only in the 1kg jars, and I know that the small ones are evil, but they're convenient when you're only around for 2 more months).

So I found peanut butter interestingly enough it's one of the few foods that I buy without looking at the price. I bought one of the others today too - apples. While there is more than 100% variation in the price of apples they're all fairly cheap. And most of the expensive apples are from the States anyhow. Which brings me to my criterion: local fruit. (I have almost completely weaned myself off of bananas. Aren't you all so proud?) I think that grocery stores need to learn geography. Frankly if an apple is labeled "Canada" it's even odds that it's from BC. At that point, the Washington apples are just as responsible. Fortunately the stickers will often say. I'm still not sure where the plain ones are from though (I've seen BC ones and I've seen Ontario ones). Actually I didn't see any BC stickers today. And only one set of Ontario ones - on MacIntosh apples. The which I am not fond of. The bag of apples I ended up getting though, says Ontario on the bag (and no, that's referring to the apples, not the bag). Shame that it barely fit in my knapsack (yes, I need to think about this stuff BEFORE I go through the cash).

From there I hit the tofu, where I had the disappointing experience with the fake cheese. However, as I mentioned, the dessert wasn't too bad. The only thing they were short on was actualy tofu...

The cereal wasn't that big a deal, I just grabbed on because I was tired after price-checking the soy milk. Said price-checking actually turned out well. Actually, I wasn't paying that much attention to the price, more to the nutritional info. And I ended up (deliberately) getting some unsweetened soy milk. I've tried some already, and I think that I shan't bother sweetening it at all, it's pretty decent. It's only 3/4 the calories and about 1/3 the sodium, and has all the good stuff I want. So I'm quite pleased with that, and will pay the extra 70 cents that it normally costs over the PC brand stuff (which has the most sodium of any I checked). Oh, and it was on sale. So today I only paid 20 cents more.

*happy soy milk dance*