August 7, 2013: My Regional Canadian Food Heroes - the Farm(er)s

The Canadian Food Experience Project began June 7 2013. As we (participants) share our collective stories across the vastness of our Canadian landscape through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity through the cadence of our concerted Canadian voice. Please join us.

I live in the South West end of Durham Region in the town of Ajax, Ontario. The most famous buildings in our area are the Pickering and Darlington Nuclear Plants. Some of you may even be old enough to remember the outcry by the public of the construction of both of these plants because of the potential impact they would have on the surrounding environment.

For you see, Durham Region is part of the Ontario Green Belt. And when the plants were first activated, everyone thought the nuclear plants would destroy the farmers’ fields with their hazardous waste and other environmental impact.

What destroyed the farmers’ fields wasn’t so much the nuclear waste but the population explosion in Durham region caused by the success of the nuclear industry. More jobs meant more people. More people meant more houses. And so, developers offered farmers ridiculous amounts of money for their land at a time when they needed it most, and in the place of crops rose row houses upon row houses, subdivision after subdivision.

The developments haven’t stopped. People are choosing to leave the static metropolis of Toronto and move further east. Ajax is growing in population because we have more dormant land for developers to use for more houses and more shopping centres. More shopping centres mean more food stores. When I say “food stores”, I don’t mean just grocery stores (which is where food lives and where it dies – have you ever seen a frozen thin crust pizza in a box? That to me defines the death of food.). I also mean fast-food and/or chain restaurants where the meals are cookie-cutter, boil-in-bag or frozen-to-flat grill, and the only flavour you can be guaranteed to taste is salt.

Unfortunately, most of the people who move out to the suburbs, or to this part of South Durham, love to frequent these harbingers of food death. Why else would we have 15 different wing chains within a 4 km radius?

But all is not lost out here. In spite of the amount of sodium dealers residing in the monolithic shopping plazas, we have a few local food heroes who are doing their best to ensure the people of Southwest Durham have the freshest, healthiest, most nutritious produce in Ontario.

One of these local farms is Stroud Farms. Their main store is located on the Whitby/Ajax border, surrounded by pear and apple orchards. Stroud Farms also owns several other acres of farm land in the boundary of the Town of Ajax, growing corn, raspberries, beets, and other root and tuber vegetables. Their main store is open from July to November, and in the fall, they have the largest selection of pumpkins and gourds in the region. They also sell locally-sourced honey and maple syrup, a limited amount of baked goods, and a limited amount of produce which is grown by other local farmers that they themselves might not grow on their farm (e.g. kale) but they wish to make available to their customers. Stroud Farms has a secondary store located right on their corn field on Kingston Road/Highway 2 in Ajax.

Stroud Farms popup store on the corn field, courtesy of www.stroudfarms.ca 

Their website can be found here:  www.stroudfarms.ca . During the season, Stroud Farms is my every day farmer’s market!

The other local farm that I want to call out as a local food hero is Willowtree Farm. They are located a little bit north of the Southwest Durham area, just outside of Port Perry (about a half hour north of Ajax). Like Stroud Farms, Willowtree Farm has its store located right on the farm itself. They differ because Willowtree Farm also raises organic, hormone-free beef, and offers it for sale at their store. The Willowtree Farm store also has a working beehive in its walls, which you can see when you visit.

Willowtree Farm also offers pick-your-own berry fields and a delivery service within Durham Region of a weekly basket of fresh, farm-raised meat and farm-grown produce to be delivered to your door. This delivery-to-door is known as a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.  Willowtree Farm also offers a variety of rare and unusual produce grown locally that you might not see in other farm markets, all gathered from nearby farms if not grown at Willowtree itself.

The Willowtree Farms website can be found here: www.willowtreefarm.ca . I can verify that their natural angus beef is some of the best beef I have eaten in my life (and I’ve eaten a lot of beef, even in Alberta! (sorry Valerie)).

In among all of the land of Durham, and elsewhere, being taken over by housing development after housing development, and shopping centre after shopping centre, local farms and farmers are my Canadian food heroes. They are visible within the community, giving consumers an affordable, healthy, and local choice of food purchases. Customers and consumers can ask the farmers questions about how the food was raised, the growing conditions, or any other concerns they may have. And their food simply tastes better. Without the need for salt.

July 7, 2013: A Regional Canadian Food

The Canadian Food Experience Project began June 7 2013. As we (participants) share our collective stories across the vastness of our Canadian landscape through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity through the cadence of our concerted Canadian voice. Please join us.

Sometimes it seems that we Canadians can only see ourselves the way the rest of the world sees us - as one small group of people on the world's second-largest political land mass. We don't contemplate the differences between us, unless we think about Quebec, or maybe even Newfoundland.

It wasn’t until 2004 that I realised that not all dialects of non-Newfoundland Canadian English are the same. I had travelled to Winnipeg in August of that year to attend a work conference for all members of the various legal departments across the company for a total of twenty people.

On the first night of the trip, the General Counsel hosted a dinner party for all of us at his home in the thick of mosquito season. He had one of those fancy electronic mosquito fences around his place, so we weren’t bitten too badly. I thought nothing could top black fly season in Algonquin. I was wrong!

Dinner was a lovely grand turkey dinner with all the trimmings. A little unusual for August, but turkey is probably the easiest thing to prepare for such a large crowd. The food was comfy, delicious, and made us all feel right at home, like one big family (which was one of the objectives of the trip).

After dinner, we were helping to tidy up when one of the lawyers wanted to know about the “dainties” that were coming out.

We Torontonians froze, and gave the lawyer and the others a curious look. We wanted to know exactly what kind of dinner party we had been invited to, and just how these people in Winnipeg, who seemed so mild-mannered and meek, spent their summer evenings!

“Excuse me,” one of the Toronto legal assistants called out, “Did you say ‘dainties’?”

“Yeah,” the lawyer replied, “don’t you guys have dainties in Toronto?”

“We do,” I said, “but they’re not exactly appropriate to show at dinner.”

There were enough raised eyebrows to lift the roof off of the house.

“You know, dainties,” said one of the Winnipeg legal assistants, “little cakes, biscuity things, we put them in little paper cups on a tray…”

“OH!” gasped all of the Torontonians with relief. “You mean pastries and petit fours!”

“Well, what did you think we meant?”

We told her.

After the dainty miscommunication, the Winnipeggers introduced us to another "new" word in their non-accented dialect.

“And Sue even got a shmoo!" one of the Winnipeg assistants cried.

We Torontonians had no clue what that meant. To me, Shmoo was the little white ghost cartoon creature from Saturday mornings.

“Okay, we give up,” said a Torontonian, “What the hell is a shmoo?”

The Winnipeggers gasped.

“Oh, you don’t know the shmoo? You’ve gotta have the shmoo!”

And that’s when they brought in this huge cake iced with the whitest cream, served with a gravy boat of butterscotch sauce. My Torontonian boss called it a Baked Alaska. He was promptly yelled at by every Winnipegger in the room.

So we each had a slice of shmoo and some dainties. And that shmoo – perfect chiffon cake with the crunch of nuts and billowy Chantilly cream drizzled with just the right amount of butterscotch – was incredible. It looks as if it's going to be rich, heavy, and ladened with sugary sweetness. It is, in fact, the opposite. It is a very light, well-balanced dessert, depending on how much sauce you drizzle overtop or have on the side. 

It makes me sad (though it makes my hips happy) to think that they only have this in Winnipeg. When I asked for the recipe, I was told that nobody makes their own shmoo – there are arguments over which bakery in Winnipeg makes the best shmoo, and people choose their affiliations and order shmoos from their favourite bakery.

 

 

 

Since we don’t have that luxury in the GTA (and if there is a place around here that sells shmoo, will someone let me know?), I had to make my own shmoo.  The pictures here are of the shmoo I made for our Canada Day dessert this year courtesy of the recipe from Canadian Living. It’s not that difficult once you can make a chiffon cake. But the Winnipeggers are right – there is nothing like the taste of a shmoo in Winnipeg, with some dainties on the side!

 

Hint: use your favourite butterscotch sauce recipe. The one from the link above ends up giving you a sauce with a fudgelike consistency, and has to be monitored carefully so it doesn't end up becoming candy.

My First Authentic Canadian Food Memory (for The Canadian Food Experience Project, June 7, 2013)

The Canadian Food Experience Project began June 7 2013. As we (participants) share our collective stories across the vastness of our Canadian landscape through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity through the cadence of our concerted Canadian voice. Please join us.

I was born at the dawn of multiculturalism in this country, at the corner of Lawrence & McCowan in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. My parents came to Toronto from Trinidad & Tobago, a place where multiculturalism was a way of life. Caribbean food, especially food in Trinidad, like the people, comes from a mix of all of the cultures who settled the island, whether they were brought by slave traders,  were the slave traders themselves, or emigrated during British rule.

My experience of Canadian food is probably different than most, since as a kid, Canadian food meant grilled cheese & fries with ketchup at the Kresge’s counter with my mom at Eglinton Square after my checkups with the doctor. Canadian food was the food my mom didn’t cook at home. I grew up on roti and curry, thick chicken soups, callaloo, pelau, salt fish buljol, baiganee, and other Trinidadian staples. My mom only started buying Kraft Dinner after I was old enough to be seduced by television advertising and asked for it by name.

My mother grew up on a farm in Trinidad. My grandfather raised goats and chickens, had the occasional steer for beef, and grew fruits and vegetables by the bushel. His farm had a small swamp on it where he and my uncles would catch fresh blue crab and crayfish and cascadoo (a hard-shelled fish that is special to Trinidad, and has nearly become extinct now), among other fish. So my mother knew a thing or two about choosing fresh vegetables, meats, and fish.

Just before I turned 4, my parents moved from Victoria Park and Ellesmere all the way to Newmarket, Ontario. My parents wanted to have a nice house with a yard for their kid to play in. Newmarket is also near the Holland Marsh, and every weekend we would venture up to Bradford to buy our vegetables and fruits for the week. My mother trusted the produce straight from the farm over produce at the grocery. It seems obvious now, but in 1974, people were still enamoured by tinned vegetables, TV dinners, and instant mashed potatoes.  

The backyard at our new house was huge (definitely larger than most suburban yards these days). The previous owners left us with a large back garden, which included a large, flourishing plant of rhubarb. My mother had no idea what to do with rhubarb. We planted our tomatoes next to it, because, well, all of our neighbours planted tomatoes. It seemed like the Canadian thing to do.

(Those tomatoes we planted near the rhubarb were the sweetest tomatoes I had ever tasted in my  young life. I used to eat the ripe ones right off the vine (because what 4 year old in 1974 would even think about washing a fruit!) and get in trouble for not leaving any for my mom. To this day, I prefer the taste of a Canadian backyard-grown, vine-ripened tomato over any other tomato on the planet.)

As for the rhubarb itself, my mother asked our neighbours, two elderly British ladies who lived together in a large farmhouse-style home to the back of our house, what she should do with this plant. The ladies were more than happy to help her out, and told her to wait until the rhubarb stalks were pure red, then they would be ready to be picked. They were going to give her a recipe to make a pie out of the fruit (and yet even though I know rhubarb is technically a vegetable, to this day I still call it a fruit).  They showed her how to make a shortcrust dough, and then showed her how to cook down the rhubarb for the filling and add sugar and spices and then put it into the crust and bake the pie.

It was probably the second most disgusting thing I’d eaten in my life. After liver.

I hated anything tart, and the tanginess of the rhubarb, even with sugar, was too much for my 4 year old palate. I spat it out and swore I’d never eat those red stalks again, and for 35 years, I didn’t.  It wasn’t until I had a child of my own and moved out to Ajax,  because I wanted to raise him in a house with a backyard, and discovered the green belt at this end of suburbia, where the strawberries smelled like heaven and the rhubarb was redder than the ripest berry, did I decided to give rhubarb another chance. Then I learned that the key is to NOT cook the rhubarb before putting it in the pie!

 

For those of you who are now craving strawberry-rhubarb pie (since strawberries are now in season), here’s my own personal recipe for the filling. Pie crust is more about technique than recipe, so whatever you choose for your pie crust, if it’s Crisco, butter, lard, or some combination of those, the key is to freeze your fat, and then use a box grater to grate it into the flour mixture (I use 2 c flour, 1 Tbsp sugar and 1 tsp salt for 1 cup of fat). Use a pastry blender or knife to mix the grated bits in, then add ice cold water, bring it together using the knife you used to stir in the bits of fat, and then dump the lump right onto plastic wrap. Wrap that lump of dough and then shape it into a ball (I shape mine into discs so they chill through, but to each their own) while in the wrap. Wrap overtop of this and then refrigerate overnight or for a minimum of 2 hours. Not 20 min. 2 hours.  

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

1 pie crust recipe that will make a top and bottom crust.

For the filling:

2 cups diced fresh rhubarb (try to get it redder than the ones in the picture)
3 cups diced hulled fresh strawberries
¾ to 1 cup white granulated sugar
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp ground cardamom
¼ cup cornstarch or 1/3 cup tapioca starch
Pinch of salt
1 beaten egg

1.       Combine rhubarb, strawberries, and ½ cup of white sugar in a bowl. Toss the fruit in the sugar, then dump it all in a colander and leave it to drain in the sink or over another bowl for at least 45 min but no more than 1 hour.

2.       When the fruit has been sitting for about 30 min, preheat oven to 350F and line bottom of pie dish with bottom crust. Put bottom crust back into the fridge until your fruit is drained.

3.       After the fruit has been drained, put it into another bowl and add remaining ingredients. Toss to combine well but work fast since your fruit will be mushy and liquidy.

4.       Take bottom pie crust out of the fridge and add fruit.

5.       You may choose to top the pie with a lattice using the second half of the crust. It looks prettiest, but if you just want to put the top on and cut a nice pattern in it, you can do that too. Don’t leave it without a top, though.  Just make sure to put a top on with ventilation, and crimp the edges well.

6.       Brush pastry with beaten egg and place in oven for 20 minutes. You may choose to TENT a piece of tin foil over the pie at this point, but be careful not to squish or tuck the foil onto the pie itself.

7.       Continue to bake the pie from 45-60 minutes more, or until the filling is cooked through and bubbling, and your crust is golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool somewhere where nobody will try to eat it. (Good luck with that).

The Canadian Food Experience Project (or how I'm reactivating my food blog)

So I haven't posted here in almost a year. How do I know that? Because my last blog had something to do with butter tarts and the Tour de France, and the Tour is starting again in exactly 28 days from today (squee!!).

It's not that I haven't been cooking, or baking, or anything culinary for a year. I have. But I've also been trying to write offline. Recently I've been encouraged to go back, pick up the page, and make a concerted effort to make this writing thing a go. After all, I'm hitting my mid-life crisis (as you can tell if you've seen the sixteen colours in my hair these days, including but not limited to, grey) and if I don't do this now, well, it's never going to happen, and I might as well just go back into the ocean of commonality sludge with all the other dreams that die...

So I've been hanging out in the world of fiction. It's a fun place because you get to make stuff up (like hanging out with men who look like Alexander Skarsgard and Justin Theroux). But really, it's hard work. And I want people to read what I'm writing now. Plus, I want to write more about food. I love sharing my recipes, and I even love the feedback I get from people who've tried making the bacon & eggs cheesecake ("mine cracked. How did you get yours not to crack?" etc.).

This morning, I was sitting around, waiting for people to wake up, sipping my green tea, and checking my Twitter feed to see what nonsense had happened overnight when there was a very interesting tweet from @lucywaverman:

So I clicked on the link, and read about The Canadian Food Experience Project. And well, I'm Canadian. I like food. And I like writing about food. So I contacted Valerie, and now I've signed up!

This will now make sure you have at least one (1) new food blog entry each month. This coming entry (due on June 7th which is Friday as I write this - ack! deadlines!!) will be about My First Authentic Canadian Food Memory. Now given that I was born and raised here, and given that my parents are from Trinidad, this should be a very interesting memory. It may not be as luscious or organic as some of the other writers, but it will be Canadian, and it will be uniquely mine.

So stay tuned to this page... :)

Canadiana

Happy Canada Day!! July is my favourite month of the year. It starts off with Canada Day (a stat holiday) and then has the Tour de France (21 days of well-toned men in lycra), and we don't even need a coat!!

So for this Canada Day weekend, I thought I'd try making some Canadiana dish, in between writing the novel that no one will ever see and the blog that no one reads (not this one but this one). So I set out on the quest to make the most grandma of desserts, the humble butter tart.

Butter tarts (or tarte au sucre if you're from Quebec - Happy Belated St. Jean-Baptiste by the way) are a pure Canadian concoction. Well they appear to originate from Quebec, who are conveniently Canadian to the rest of us when they do something good (butter tarts, poutine, depanneurs, GSP, Schwartz's) and then are those friggin French whenever they do something the rest of the country finds off-putting (hockey riots, student riots, FLQ riots). Personally, my politics are for a Canada that includes Quebec just as it is, with its distinct society and its obscene taxes on gasoline (where you can also buy beer, unlike anywhere else in the country except for Alberta. In fact, Quebec and Alberta have a lot in common, but whatever you do, don't tell them that!).

And so, my Canada includes the humble butter tart. Some people like to put things into butter tarts, like nuts (nuts are not indigenous to Canada, so why?) or raisins (raisins are rabbit droppings from hell, so again, why?). I like my tarte au sucre as nature intended - plain, just a little runny, and sweet.

When I looked at the components of the butter tart, it's really just a pate sucree with a runny filling. Though really, the crust should be made with le Tenderflake (and I found out why in the process) instead of butter.

Pate Sucree
(from La Varenne)

1 2/3 cups (200g) soft flour (all-purpose will do in a pinch)
6 1/2 Tbsp (100g) cold, unsalted butter (does not have to be cubed) or Tenderflake lard (yes lard)
1/2 cup  (100g) caster or confectioners sugar (if caster - pate sucree; if confectioners - pate sablee)
4 egg yolks (cold)
1/2 tsp salt (I used 1/4 because I had sea salt)
1/2 tsp real (please) vanilla extract

Sift flour, sugar, and salt together onto a clean, smooth work surface. Make a well in the centre. Using your knuckles, pound the butter to soften it (a good stress reliever). Add the butter into the flour until it looks like cornmeal. Make another well and add the yolks and vanilla, bringing the whole thing together.

Using a pastry scraper, spatula, or knife, work the crumbs until you have large pieces that stick together. Press crumbs into a ball and knead with the heel of your hand until it comes together as one smooth piece of pastry. This will take a few minutes. Work out that stress. Once its smooth, form it into a ball and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 30 min to overnight, remembering that it is butter/lard in there, so if you leave it for too long, you'll have to let it warm up a bit before rolling it.

When you're ready to make tarts, roll out the dough as you would for a large pie, until it's about 1/3-1/2 inch thick. Yes make them this thick! Then cut large circles, about an inch larger than your tart tin or muffin tin. If you're using muffin tins, for the love of God grease them, even if they're no stick. Because in the world of the butter tart, there is no such thing as "non-stick". They're butter tarts!!

Take your cut circle and form it around the muffin tin/tart tin, making sure that no holes form. If you tear the pastry, make sure you fix it, so that there is no way in hell your tart will leak from the bottom. (Trust me!) Once you've lined your tins, put them back in the fridge while you make your filling.

So while I was watching Stage 1 of the Tour de France today (now yesterday as I'm finishing this entry during Stage 2), I put together a pate sucree and chilled it, then rolled it out and thought, why am I going to make these in muffin tins? Why not be fancy about it and use my tart tins that I never use (again I found out why in the process)? So, I rolled my pate sucree tart thin, and lined my tart tins.

To make the filling, I used maple syrup instead of corn syrup. Why? Because it's Canada Day, that's why! And what the hell, corn syrup? Did you know that shit can power your car? Corn syrup scares me. Even more than raisins.

Maple Butter Tart Filling
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 whole egg
1/2 cup maple syrup

(yes that's it. I couldn't believe it, either.)

First, set your oven to 375F. Whatever Celsius. In Canada, we use metric for everything but cooking. Deal with it, Europeans!

The best way to mix this is by hand. I know...nobody has hand-creamed butter and sugar since 1972. But you have to for this. Or else it's a waste of electricity and it's just not right, eh? So, using a wooden spoon, cream butter and sugar together until it's smooth. Then add egg and vanilla and whisk until fluffy and even. Then stir (not whisk) in maple syrup until blended. Bits of butter will float to the top. That's ok. That's your tart cap.

Take your shells out of the fridge. Pour in the filling to about halfway up the tart. Don't go all the way up. Why? Because it's sugar, damnit. What does sugar do at high heat? It bubbles! So fill it 1/2 maybe 2/3 if you like to live dangerously. Fill as many as your mix allows (mine did 7). Then put them in the oven for about 12 minutes. Check. If they are leaking and flowing all over, cry. If they're not bubbling, leave them for another 4 - 7 minutes. When they bubble, give them a minute and then take them out. Pray to God they haven't leaked. If you are worried about leakage, make sure your tins are on a cookie sheet.

So here's how the good ones turned out, because, well, nobody ever posts pics of the disasters, do they?

That is, until now:

What happened? Well, they're butter tarts. The crust was made with butter. Butter melts in the heat. Butter also melts through butter. Ergo, leaks all over the place. Leaks which might have been contained had I used the muffin tins for the tarts as every self-respecting Canadian grandma will tell you.

But hell, they tasted amazing! So good they can only be described with bad grammar...

So enjoy the rest of your Canada Day weekend. Have a butter tart! And since all the stores are closed Monday, go for it and make your own. Spoon any leaked filling on top of chantilly cream or Canadiana ice cream by Chapman's. :)

More Fun with Nutella

Is there any more polarizing food than Nutella? People either love it or hate it. But very rarely is anyone indifferent about it. Many cyclists consider it ambrosia. Many women consider it ambrosia. Many other people think it was created in the bowels of hell and should stay there.

I am a reformed Nutella consumer. I loved it as a child, hated it once my hormones kicked in, and now, in the twilight of my biological clock years, am starting to love it once again. (Maybe it's an estrogen thing...?) 

I've already made the aforementioned crack cookies (in my previous blog), which are still the best cookies I have ever made. I tried a stuffed Nutella cookie, and it was okay, but they weren't as "cracky".

Now, it's strawberry season. We're two weeks early this year, thanks to the summer conditions we had in and around the Greater Toronto Area in March and early April. In late April, we did have a frost, and some of our strawberry farmers struggled to keep their plants alive. But alive they stayed, and so I picked up the first sweet Ontario strawberries of the season  last weekend.

My son is currently in a strawberry phase. "I love strawberries because they are so healthy!" he says. Except when it comes to eating them. He likes looking at them, smelling them, but putting them in his mouth whole? Nope. Still won't do it.

So I was stuck with this quart of strawberries. I suppose I could have eaten them all, but that would be selfish of me (never mind I really don't feel up for a cleanse at the moment). And I was stuck for a breakfast idea. I was going to make strawberry muffins, but muffins last way too long in my house since, well, I don't eat them. My son will eat them the day they are made, but after that, they sit there. And my partner is off carbs at the moment. 

I made a batch of crack cookies yesterday, and stared at the Nutella jar on the counter this morning. What goes with strawberries better than chocolate? There had to be a recipe out there for strawberry Nutella something...sure, lots of recipes for Nutella pancakes with strawberries on top. But again, that doesn't solve the problem of my son's disdain for fruit looking like fruit.

So I made up my own recipe. And he ate it. And so did everyone else. So I'm sharing it with you, because really, if you're a Nutella junkie fan, it's only fair to share Nutella recipes with the world:

Strawberry Nutella Pancakes

Makes 7 large or 12 mid-small pancakes

1 cup plain flour (all-purpose or whole wheat or bread flour)

1 1/2 Tbsp sugar (white or brown)

1 1/2 - 2 tsp baking powder (depending on how fluffy you want your pancakes)

1/4 tsp salt

1 large egg

1 cup plain milk (not buttermilk or cream)

1/4 - 1/3 cup Nutella (to taste)

1 tsp vanilla

2 Tbsp melted unsalted butter, cooled

1 pint minimum but not more than 1 quart fresh strawberries, hulled, washed, and pureed

First things first - wash your strawberries. Don't buy a huller. Just use a paring knife and cut the green part off. These are being pureed, so there's no need to make them look fancy. Puree them in a chopper or food processor (or a mortar and pestle if you have the time, but most of us are busy trying to wake up children and/or make sure they don't kill themselves during unsupervised play time). Set aside.

Blend all the dry ingredients together in a large-ish bowl. Don't use a spoon. Use a whisk, pastry blender, or a fork. Make sure the baking powder is incorporated well into the flour. If you want, you can add a dash (1/4 tsp) of cinnamon or cardamom or both into the dry ingredients at this point. Set aside.

Mix all the wet ingredients, including the  Nutella and strawberries, into a medium bowl. For this, don't use a whisk. You can use a spoon or a fork, but if the Nutella is in globs, it's not a problem, really. Just make sure your eggs are a little scrambled into your milk, berries, and Nutella. 

Now, here's the secret to fluffy, yummy pancakes: Dump the wet into the dry. Stir, or better, fold in less than 10 times with a spoon (or whatever you used to mix the wet ingredients together), until most of the flour is barely blended in. Do not overmix. It doesn't have to be homogeneous. It just has to "meet" - dry, meet wet.  

Second secret to great pancakes - get a cast iron skillet. It can be used as a weapon, but it's the best thing ever for pancakes. It holds heat well, is thick enough to keep the fire off the bottom, and they come out oh-so fluffalicious! Use a ladle or large spoon to pour batter into the centre of the skillet for a pancake large enough to eat but small enough that you can handle easily. And watch. Soon you'll see little bubbles start to appear at the surface. Keep watching. The bubbles will burst and not close up. Keep watching. The edges will start to look dry and matte. There you go. Use your flipper, slide it under, and flip! Perfect pancake. Wait until the bottom looks as dry as the top of your edge, and then turn onto a plate. Or, if you're still not sure, stick them in a warm (185F) oven until you've finished your batch and are ready to serve.

I served these with whipped cream (like cream I whipped myself by hand, unsweetened. Not that stuff in a can. And good lord NOT cool whip!), and maple syrup, and for my stepdaughter, topped with whole tiny strawberries. 

Sorry I only have pics of the prep, but you'll see, they are a pretty colour. And if you have Nutella fiends in your house...they'll just ask for more!!

Crack Cookies!!!

Last Sunday was a beautiful Wintring morning. Since we haven't really had Winter yet, except for a couple of days, and it was nice and warm like Spring, and it's after January first, I'm making up a new word and calling it Wintring.

I woke up early. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. The tank is clean...

Anyway, I had an urge to bake something with peanut butter. The child did not want muffins. He wanted eggs and sausage. So no peanut butter there.

I didn't want to make just any old peanut butter cookies. I wanted something different. So I went to my good friend Google, and Google led me to these. They are quite easy to make, and it's a good recipe. I substituted organic red fife flour for the whole wheat flour, which added an extra nutty taste, and organic peanut butter for that crap that they make with hydrogenated peanut oil and shitloads of icing sugar.

In the middle of rolling the cookies for the cookie sheets, my BBM went off. Normally I would have just waited until I was finished, but I was expecting some news during the weekend, and unfortunately, it was the sad news that we had anticipated. I had one batch in the oven, and a second batch on a second tray nearly ready to go. There was still some dough remaining in the mixing bowl, so I threw some plastic wrap over it and put the entire bowl in the fridge.

As I was on my way to the funeral, the sunny day that I had woken up to quickly became overcast, and as we drove to the gravesite after the service, the snow started falling in giant flakes. By the time we had buried the body (most people at the site performed the mitzvah of helping the family bury the body by shoveling dirt into the grave after the body is placed inside), we were standing in near whiteout conditions. The family's limo fishtailed as it left the cemetery, but they and the rest of us were okay. Since the storm was travelling eastward, I ended up driving all the way home in it. When I did get home, the one thing that helped settle me from the day's events was taking the remainder of the dough out of the fridge and rolling it up into cookies, pressing each one with a fork (as you do with peanut butter cookies).

I also noticed that, when I came back, the 18 cookies that had been baked had suddenly become 4. And the 18 I baked after that were consumed within 24 hours of leaving the oven.

So let me warn you know - these are comfort cookies that will bring you joy in your time of sorrow. They are also, simply put, highly addictive. Make sure you make a double batch, as I have to when I make them again this Saturday for UFC night. :)