And we’re back…

January 18, 2012 ~ Teresa ~ 1 Comment

If you stopped by earlier today, you might wonder why my site went dark in support of the Stop SOPA/PIPA campaign. After all, this is a Canadian site. Unfortunately, the proposed legislation will have as big an impact here and across the world as it does in the United States. Michael Geist’s article on the problems posed by this legislation for Canadians can be found here:

Why Canadians Should Participate in the SOPA/PIPA Protest

Also, while it’s still up, check out The Oatmeal for a funny and informative protest page.

Sucre à la Crème

December 28, 2011December 12, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 4 Comments

I just returned from a lovely visit with a couple of friends this afternoon. I gave them each some sucre à la crème, as one is Québécoise and the other is Scottish and misses having tablet (a very similar confection). We talked about having a little get together so that I could teach them how to make it – it’s much easier than telling, especially since in my family’s tradition there are no candy thermometers involved. I spoke to my mother about it and as it happens, she’s been looking up resources on the internet since we made our last batch. The recipes vary widely and the methods are very different, too. In our family, we use heavy-bottomed soup pots when we make this candy, but most of the videos we found show smaller pots being used. The consistency varies a lot, too, especially when maple syrup or corn syrup are used.

Here are two videos that can give you an idea of how sucre à la crème is made, though the method is a little different than the one we use. They’re both in French, though Ricardo has English recipe resources out there, too. Madame Quintin is the perfect French-Canadian Mémère, don’t you think?

I might have to make a video of my mother making her version. Maybe in time for next Christmas.

A Very Merry Christmas

December 25, 2011May 9, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 10 Comments

I hope you’re having a peaceful, happy day today.

I’d like to share the recipe for one of my favourite Christmas treats – sucre à la crème. When I was growing up, my mother and I would make trays and trays of desserts for the big family Christmas meal my parents used to host, along with their Boxing Day open house. Cookies, squares, cakes, and candies, but of them all, we looked forward to sucre à la crème the most, especially if we were lucky enough to have a batch from one of my mother’s aunts back in Manitoba.

My mother is French-Canadian, but her family comes from the francophone communities anchored by St. Boniface. Our Christmas meals have always reflected this and it just wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t have tourtière, boulettes, and sucre à la crème. We’ve even occasionally had a réveillon after Midnight Mass, with goose, then had an anglophone Christmas dinner with my father’s Irish family in the evening.

Sucre à la crème is a sort of fudge, but it’s nothing like what you’d find in a candy store or market stand. It’s a simple affair of sugar and cream (obviously), versions of which pop up around the world. In Scotland, they’ve got tablet, in Mexico there’s dulce de leche, Italy has penuche, and India has burfi. There are probably tonnes of other examples, too.
The Québécois version uses maple sugar, but those trees are a little rarer on the Prairies, so my family’s recipes use mostly brown sugar. My mother’s aunts were famous for their versions, though my Tante Pauline’s was undisputedly the best, with my Tante Leona’s coming a close second. My mother and I went through their recipes for sucre à la crème recently and realized that they were all a little different and that the versions evolved over the years. When I was a teenager, I learned to make it with two cups of brown sugar, one cup of whipping cream, and a teaspoon of vanilla. When we were looking at the other recipes my mother has, this was what we found:

Tante Pauline’s Version

2 cups brown sugar (1/2 c white)
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla
walnuts

Sauce

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup whipping cream

Tante Leona’s Version

3 cups brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 cups whipping cream

Mom’s Version

2 cups brown sugar (1/2 c white)
1 1/4 cups whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla

In all cases, combine the sugar and whipping cream, whisk together until well-blended and cook over medium-low heat, stirring often, until the mixture sugars the spoon (a metal one is best) and forms a ball when dropped into a dish of cold water. Remove from heat and stir vigourously, adding the vanilla when the candy is just beginning to stiffen. When the scrapings are becoming solid, it’s time to pour the candy into a buttered square pan. Chill in the fridge for several hours or overnight, then cut into small squares. It keeps for a week in the fridge or several months in the freezer.

I lost my sucre à la crème making mojo for a few years; for some reason I just couldn’t get it to set. When I went to my mother’s house this year, we made three batches, using my mother’s recipe. All but one was perfect and the imperfect one wasn’t bad. I think what made the difference was the two of us working together, just as we did when I was a child.

What are your favourite holiday traditions?

A Little Celebration of a Small Accumulation

September 8, 2011September 8, 2011 ~ Teresa ~ 22 Comments

I’m not so much a collector as I am an accumulator. When we were kids, my mother thought that my siblings and I should all collect something. I didn’t see the appeal, as I was too busy trying to read as many books as possible, so she ended up choosing something for me. Somewhere in my storage space is a box of thimbles that I got from various relatives, mostly as part of a Christmas or birthday present. When I run across them, I enjoy the associations and memories they bring up, but I don’t have any desire to add to the collection. As an adult, I can better understand the appeal of collecting. My budget doesn’t allow for art collection and my accumulation of teapots doesn’t really count, but there are a few book series that I buy.

The Massey Lectures, published by Anansi Press, is the series that I’m trying to complete. I’m missing some of the earlier lectures. I also really like the Canongate Myths series, though I’ve been a little lackadaisical about keeping up with the new releases. The rest of my book collection is quite scattershot – a little biography, a mixture of mostly Canadian, Commonwealth, and British fiction, as well as a lot of non-fiction on a bunch of different topics. It’s nice to have a little coherence added to the mix.

My other growing collection is a significant number of cookbooks. My partner and I have had to move our cookbooks from a small bookcase to a larger one, as they mysteriously go on multiplying. There’s even a series of books that bridges the gap between my cookbooks and my other book collections. Penguin’s Great Food series reprints food writing ranging from Samuel Pepys and Brillat-Savarin to Elizabeth David and Alice Waters. I think the entire series will be taking up some shelf space here before long. The books themselves are beautiful, with some of the best cover design I’ve seen in some time. The writings promise to enlighten, amuse and even offend. I think I officially have a new book (set) crush.

Since I’ve been accumulating quite a lot of posts here, one-hundred today in fact, I thought I would do a little something to celebrate and show my appreciation for those of you who’ve visited over the past year. I’ve loved your comments and even feel as though I’ve got to know some of you a little bit. I bought two of the books from the Great Food series and I’m going to give them away. As it’s also my one-year blogoversary (again, that is too a word!) on September 20th, I’ll announce the winners then. All you have to do is leave a comment, letting me know what you like to collect and which of the two books you’d prefer. (If the winners pick the same book, the person drawn first will get their choice.)

The books are these: Charles Lamb’s A Dissertation upon Roast Pig and Agnes Jekyll’s A Little Dinner Before the Play. I have to confess that I didn’t choose them because they’re my favourites of the series, but because – of the titles available at the bookstore I visited – these were the two with the prettiest covers. I do have my moments of superficiality.

A Tale of Two Crusts – A French Fridays Catch-Up

July 29, 2011 ~ Teresa ~ 14 Comments

My post on this week’s recipe, Citrus-Berry Terrine, will have to wait until later this weekend. I’m still not fully up to standing for very long, but think I can manage it in the next day or two. After all, I don’t want to miss out on using local berries at the height of their goodness.

Instead, I’m going to do a catch up post on two of the recipes I missed out on when they were scheduled. Torteau de chèvre was one of the recipes I’d been looking forward to from the beginning of French Fridays, while Spinach and Bacon Quiche was a recipe that had escaped my notice at first.

What both of these recipes have in common is Dorie’s pâte brisée, or tart dough. This tart dough is not the cookie-like pâte sucrée, but one that has a similar structure and is suitable for both savoury and sweet fillings. I’ve managed to adapt it to gluten-free just by using my favourite gluten-free flour mix and reducing the quantity of flour by 1/4 cup. I wish g-f adaptation was always so easy.

As you can see from the photo at the top of this post, I don’t own a tart pan. So, I just press the dough into a springform pan to the height I need. It looks just fine when it’s filled and out of the oven, but I’m sure I’ll succumb to the temptation and purchase a tart pan at some point. What is a cooking club, after all, but a good excuse to buy more cooking equipment and exciting ingredients?

I’m not sure now why I didn’t get ’round to writing a post for torteau de chèvre, but I suspect it has something to do with how few of my photos turned out. I only ended up with two I liked. I’m slowly trying to break myself of the habit of photographing food after dark. At this time of year, that’s an easy task. In May, it was a little harder. No matter, the tourteau was beautiful under any light. Making the batter is a process of adding more and more air with every step. First, the egg whites are whipped to stiff peaks, then the rest of the ingredients are separately mixed into a light, smooth batter. Once the egg whites are folded into the goat cheese mixture, the batter is almost frothy. So, it’s a surprise that once it’s poured into the par-baked crust and baked, what emerges from the oven is more like a sponge cake than a cheesecake.

I just ate the slices out of hand, without any embellishment, but you could easily serve it with a fruit or a sauce. I love what Elaine did with hers, combining it with another French Fridays assignment.

My partner wasn’t a fan of the torteau de chèvre, but he loved the spinach and bacon quiche. In fact, this quiche sent me off into a quiche baking spree. Now that I know he likes it, it’s going to be something I make monthly. It’s great for light dinners and even better for packed lunches. This particular quiche is quite hearty, which is a departure from the dish’s 1980s reputation as a lightweight, fussy meal.

I didn’t add any salt to the filling, as I knew the bacon and Parmesan would make it quite salty enough for us. It’s not something that I’d serve too regularly, as the eggs, heavy cream, cheese and bacon militate against heart health, but it’s a nice treat. It’s also something that could easily be adapted with lower-fat milk. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m planning on making a vegetarian version of this that’s a little more Mediterranean, inspired by Betsy, whose beet green quiche will also be on the menu, once I harvest the beets in my garden.

I’ve been on a quest for a good, easy gluten-free pie crust for a while now, but I’ve begun to feel that all I really need to do is to use this tart dough instead. It has a different taste and texture than pie crust, but everyone who has had the g-f version has loved it. I think I’m going to adapt my thinking around pies and stick with the dough that works. I have plenty of opportunities to make conventional pies and the crust recipe that’s been handed down in my family serves me well for those. Best of both worlds, I’d say.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of these recipes here: Torteau de Chèvre and Spinach and Bacon Quiche

At a Walk

April 10, 2011May 4, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 18 Comments

In a plane, geography becomes a physical reality; you can see the contours of a topographical map come alive. Travelling by train or taking a car on a freeway, you can track the differences between regions as you move through them. Cycling gives you control of your explorations of a city, allowing you to move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood without reference to the routes set for buses and cars. It’s walking (or scooting or however you locomote), though, that is the method scaled best to our bodies. As Rebecca Solnit says in Wanderlust: A History of Walking, “[w]alking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart.” What I especially love about walking, though, is how much I notice. Even lost in thought, there’s plenty of time for awareness of your immediate surroundings to sink in and allow you to make discoveries that you’d surely miss if you were moving any faster.

I love walking long distances, by city standards. When my partner and I first started dating, he lived near Commercial Drive and I lived in Kitsilano. I’d often walk the seven or so kilometres to his place, or back to mine. So, when I heard that Automattic was inviting WordPress users to blog about a five kilometre walk/run on the same day, I decided that it was high time to visit Burnaby Heights again. I lived there when I was a student, before I moved to Commercial Drive the first time. It’s actually a lot like the Drive.

I started my walk at Victoria Park, at the corner of Kitchener and Victoria to be precise. I made my way over to Charles Street and followed it to the pedestrian overpass near Rupert Park. Then, I made my way north and east until I reached the corner of Willingdon and East Hastings. It’s probably a bit more than five kilometres, actually.

I spent a little time exploring Burnaby Heights, which has been largely redeveloped, both commercially and residentially. Some things remain the same, though. I was happy to discover that one of our favourite student hang outs, Cafe Classico, was still there, serving good lattes and tiramisu – both of which I was in need of before making my way back home, this time sticking close to Hastings on the northern side streets.

My bare bones description doesn’t do justice to the afternoon’s walk, though. Nor do the photos I took. I walked on streets I knew and ones I didn’t, discovering gardens, parks and architecture I’d never seen before. My walking companion was my dog, Roxy, and we had encounters with dogs, birds and people along the way. A walk isn’t simply exercise and it’s not just a method of getting from one place to another. What you see, do and think while walking are as much a part of a walk as any health benefits or practical concerns can be.

Here are a few photos from yesterday:

Granville Island

April 2, 2011 ~ Teresa ~ 12 Comments

I was on Granville Island today, during a mildly blustery spring afternoon. Here’s a few photos:

I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend.

100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day – Vancouver Parade & Festival

March 5, 2011May 4, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 10 Comments

It felt good to march in the International Women’s Day parade today – great energy and a wide spectrum of participants. The march ran from McSpadden Park down Commercial Drive and up Adanac Street to the WISE Hall. I skipped the community festival, as the little dog had had enough by that point, but the crowd was amazing, filling the hall and spilling out onto the street.

Here are some pre-march photos for you:

Update – Awards

February 18, 2011February 18, 2011 ~ Teresa ~ 4 Comments

Ker-Yng at Life is Full stopped by yesterday and awarded me both the One Lovely Blog and the Stylish Blogger awards. Thanks so much! I recently wrote about awards here and I encourage you to check out all the bloggers I listed. I love the community we’re building through French Fridays with Dorie.

Thanks again Ker-Yng. And many thanks to Elaine and Betsy, for also nominating me for the Stylish Blogger award, and to Kathy for the Sisterhood of the World Bloggers award. I enjoy reading your blogs very much and I’m happy that you feel the same way about mine.

Stylish Blogger Award

January 26, 2011February 17, 2011 ~ Teresa ~ 13 Comments

Elaine at California Living was sweet enough to send me a Stylish Blogger Award. Betsy at A Plateful of Happiness was kind enough to give me one, too.

Sometimes the hardest thing about blogging isn’t finding subjects for posts or getting a really good photograph. The hardest part can be connecting with others to turn your monologue into a conversation. Kim at The Yummy Mummy Cooks Gourmet wrote a great piece called Thoughts on How to Stop Writing a Billboard in the Desert, which really puts a lot of this in perspective. She suggests you build your own tribe, rather than relying on people to discover you.

The Stylish Blogger Award is one way of doing this. Curate a list of bloggers you enjoy, let them know that you appreciate what they’re doing and then have them come up with a list of their own. Make sure you explore these lists and you’re bound to find people that you connect with. Leave comments for some of these new discoveries, start some conversations and pretty soon the blogosphere might seem a little less lonely.

Here’s how it works:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award:

Thanks so much to Elaine at California Living for choosing my blog as one of her fifteen. I’ve enjoyed her blog so much and it’s wonderful to know that she’s enjoyed mine, too.

Thanks to Betsy at A Plateful of Happiness for choosing my blog as part of her list, too. She writes with us on French Fridays and I enjoy her posts about cooking, life and reading.

2. Share 7 things about yourself:

1. I do drink beverages other than tea. Really.
2. Some say chocolate and some say lemon. I say both.
3. Though my dog does have a jacket, I am not one of “those” people.
4. I knit and crochet, but not as often as I’d like.
5. I still have cassette tapes and the means with which to play them.
6. The only sport I’ve ever been good at is curling.
7. I think Michael Quinion of World Wide Words is always right.

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers:

Play With String Crochet, knitting and cleverness
¡Me Gusta! Clever insights on architecture, music, urban issues and more
The not so exciting adventures of a dabbler… The highs and lows of kitchen adventures, with a dollop of humour
Vegan Thyme Amazing feats of recipe adaptation
Maroc Mama Food, travel and family
Miss Kris Kitchen Beautifully presented food with lovely stories
Everything But the Cake Food and knitting, PDX-style
Tammy Circeo Food and photography
Prof Who Cooks One of our newest FFwD members
The Kitchenarian Beautifully designed, full of food
The Barefoot Kitchen Witch Cooking, Gardening, Crafting and those Cakes!
The CSA Files Cooking with the bounty from an agricultural share
Lemon Tart A Vancouver Foodie
rainy day kitchen Beautiful, clean design and photography from another FFwD participant
napangel Fantastic photography

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!

Happy to and I hope that you take the time to visit Elaine and the others I’ve listed. I think you’ll enjoy their blogs, too.

Update – February 8, 2011:

Kathy of Bakeaway With Me gave me this award today. Thanks so much, Kathy! I always enjoy reading your blog. I encourage everyone to go and take a look!

Please check out everyone on my blogroll and do browse through all the participants’ blogs for French Fridays with Dorie. It’s by sharing our favourites that we can build community.