the most important meal.

If you were under the impression that my family and I are subsisting on breakfast foods and baked goods these days, you wouldn't be far wrong.

I have been managing to cobble together some decent - even inspired - dinners, which isn't hard to do given the bounty of seasonal produce; and I have banished the cereal supper for the time being, which makes me disproportionately pleased with myself.

But on full, full days like the ones I've been having (and will continue to have for the next couple of weeks, I expect), the evening meal isn't what keeps me going.

Most of my good times in the kitchen have been happening in the earliest part of the day, before it gets too hot and muggy and while what is required of me for the next twelve or so hours seems almost reasonable.

I have been using the fact that my baby is still nursing as an excuse for waking and baking relentlessly, and I have also been getting a lot of mileage out of these pancakes - wonderful for breakfast, a decent mid-morning snack, and not bad slathered with peanut butter for lunch or late at night, either.


Oatmeal Pancakes
adapted from Orangette
You must start these the night before, which I find more thrilling than onerous, but I recognize that not everyone may feel that way...

1 1/2c whole oats
2 1/4c buttermilk
1/2c whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2c butter OR coconut oil, melted and cooled

Combine oats and buttermilk in a mixing bowl; stir well, so that all of the oatmeal is submerged in the buttermilk, then cover and refrigerate over night.

The next day, sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a small bowl.

Whisk together brown sugar, eggs, and melted butter (or coconut oil) in a small bowl. Add egg mixture to buttermilk mixture, and stir well to combine.

Fold flour mixture into wet ingredients - do this gently, but make sure everything is well combined.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Brush lightly with a little oil, and then, when the pan is hot enough, add the batter by 1/4 cupsful (I get two pancakes per batch in my pan). Flip pancakes when they are looking dry around the edges, after 3 minutes or so. Cook a further few minutes, until golden, then transfer to a plate and place in the warm oven while you get on with the rest.

Makes 14 pancakes.

Country Dreams

Sometimes I feel I should be living in the country. Or at least a little more rural than downtown Toronto. I like activities that are mainly associated with rural life. Last week I went strawberry picking with some friends and my girls. It was raining on Saturday so our family spent the morning in the kitchen. Jess and Reya were grinding flour from spelt and wheat berries for our Sunday pancakes. Wini and I made jam from our picking haul. I can envision spending more days like these. The only improvement would be to be able to look out my kitchen window and see a lot more space.

Part of the problem is that I can only envision good times in the summer. I'm not sure I am cut out for long Canadian winters outside of city limits. I'm sure we would spend time outside making massive igloos and cross country skiing. But those scenarios are always interspersed with visions of me looking out a snowy window eating chocolate by myself and wondering where all the people are.

My ideal situation would be to sell my house in Toronto and buy a fabulous place in the country with lots of space to roam around. But here's the catch, all my family and friends would have to come with me. I am way too social to leave my Toronto network. I've been building up this network my whole life . I'm not sure I could move and throw it all away. Oh I'm sure they would come visit and I'm positive there are some cool country folk that I would like to befriend. I'm just too comfortable in my little life here in the big smoke. Even if the grass is just as green in rural Ontario, I think I'm going to stay on my tiny patch in Toronto.

Savoury Strawberry Crostini
adapted from The Globe and Mail

6 slices of toasted crostini
12 ounces of goat cheese
1 pint of strawberries
1 cup diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp of sugar
1 tbsp of lime juice
1 tbsp of diced pickled jalapenos
1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
freshly ground pepper to taste
freshly ground sea salt to taste
2 tbsp fresh chopped basil
2 tbsp fresh chopped mint

Spread generous amounts of goat cheese on toast. Combine all the other ingredients to make salsa. Top toasts with salsa and serve.

lucky.

(soup tureen courtesy of mrs. huizenga)

Our house is in chaos at the moment.

Having just said goodbye to the last guest we will have at this address, we have begun to dismantle our life here. It's not the most fun process, partly because of the emotional weight attached to what we are doing - but also partly due to the fact that it is an extremely messy undertaking.

Simply put, there is crap everywhere.

How is it that we've managed to accumulate so much in the three short years we have lived here?

When did I, formerly known to my friends as the compulsive minimalist, become the kind of person who has boxes and bags and bins of excess to cart to the Goodwill every day?

For every box I pack, there is another filled with things we no longer need - if indeed we ever needed them in the first place.

Going through our things, I'm half fascinated and half horrified by the pile-up; but when I manage to shift my eyes from the miasma I feel terribly lucky.

Lucky that we're in the privileged position of having more crap than we know what to do with.

And lucky that we are moving on.


Happiness Soup
adapted from Nigella Lawson

The great thing about this easy-going soup is that it works hot, warm, or even tepid. I have never tried it fridge-cold, but at room temperature it's great.

1/4c olive oil
3 medium yellow zucchini, finely diced
1 clove garlic, smashed
zest and juice of a lemon
1 tsp tumeric
4c (1 litre) chicken broth
1/2c basmati rice
4-5 large basil leaves
1 ball of mozzarella (about 325g), cut into small cubes

In a large saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add zucchini pieces and cook, stirring gently, about 5 minutes, until slightly softened.

Add garlic and tumeric and stir; then add lemon juice and zest, broth, and rice.

Cook, uncovered, about 20 minutes, until rice is cooked and zucchini is tender. Add basil leaves and remove from heat. Puree soup in batches.

Serve warm, but not necessarily hot; garnish each bowl with a handful of mozzarella.

Serves 4-6.

Jamming it

One of my best friends is getting married in July. We decide it would be great to give homemade jam as the bomboniere. I can't say or type that word without some kind of accent. If I had to win an accent contest to save my life, I would die a pointless death. Jess puts a lot of stock in people's ability to do accents. If he had known about my lack of skill in this department, I'm not sure he would of started dating me. I'm not saying I don't have other things to offer in a relationship but certainly embellishing a story with a believable accent is not one of them. My life strategy has been to surround myself with well accented people to make up for this obvious void in my life.

A few days ago, my friend Heather and I had a major jam session. It took us eight hours to make 164 jars of jam. The only breaks I took were to feed the kids dinner, give them a bath, and put them to bed. Heather worked tirelessly until the job was done. We were able to get ourselves a few hours of child labour, but they unwilling to put in a full days work. Reya and Wini hulled and mashed strawberries. Ruby keenly sensed that we had over bought and spent the day eating as many strawberries and she could get her hands on. All in all it was maybe the most productive day I've had since I've had kids.

If you get a chance to go strawberry picking this season, go make some jam. Here's a great recipe;

Spiced Strawberry Jam

5 cups crushed strawberries, cleaned and stemmed
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 box powdered fruit pectin
1/2 tsp butter
7 cups of sugar

In a saucepan, combine the strawberries and spices. Add the pectin and butter to the saucepan. Bring to a full boil on high heat stirring constantly. Stir in exactly 7 cups of sugar and mix well. Return to a full boil and boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove the saucepan from the heat and skim off any foam with a metal spoon. Ladle into sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch of headspace. Cap, seal, and process in a boiling water bath canner.
Yields five 1/2 pints of jam.
For more information on canning check out Bernardin's website

d-day.

My kids have the best dad ever.

Root Beer Cupcakes
adapted from Smitten Kitchen

I had a couple of cans of root beer in the fridge leftover from my pregnancy, and this seemed like a great excuse to crack them open. Note that these cupcakes are super moist and freeze very well - which may or may not be good news if, like me, you find having 24 cupcakes sitting on your counter to be tempting in the extreme.

Cupcakes
2c root beer
1c cocoa powder
1/2c unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 1/4c granulated sugar
1/2c firmly packed dark brown sugar
2c all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
2 eggs

Frosting
500g icing sugar
1c soft butter
250g soft cream cheese
1 tbsp rum

For the cupcakes:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 cupcake cups with paper liners. In a small saucepan, heat the root beer, cocoa powder and butter over medium heat until the butter is melted. Add the sugars and whisk until dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour and baking soda.

In a small bowl, whisk the eggs until just beaten then whisk them into the cooled cocoa mixture until combined.

Gently combine the liquid and flour mixtures together in the large bowl (batter will be slightly lumpy).

Use a 1/4c measure to fill cupcake liners and bake cupcakes, rotating trays halfway through, until a tester inserted into the center of each comes out clean, about 15-17 minutes.

Transfer pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

When cupcakes are cooled, make frosting:
Place icing sugar in the bowl of the food processor and blast for a few seconds to remove any lumps. Pulse in butter and cream cheese, and then rum.

Using an offset spatula or a table knife, dollop and spread frosting onto tops of cupcakes.

Makes 24.

special delivery.

I have begun having my groceries delivered.

The passing mention of this new habit in a recent post did nothing to reveal how momentous a difference ordering food online, and its subsequent delivery, has wrought; so let me just say, unequivocally and on the record:

It has changed my life.

I have always loved shopping for food (and most other things, too), but lately it had been starting to feel like a bit of a chore.

We have several big household expenditures coming up, so we have been making an effort to be more frugal - which has meant less shopping at the pretty little jewel box-like shops along our strip in favour of trips to the vast, faceless and uninspiring (but ultimately more economical) supermarket at the outer fringe of our neighbourhood.

Because I find going to that store the worst kind of drudgery, my husband has been doing the grocery shopping of late - and although his is an errand of mercy and I should be grateful that he does it at all (and I am grateful, really!), I am not always pleased with what he comes home with.

It's not that he's a bad shopper - I'd just prefer to do it myself.

(For a while there, because of my control issues, we were making our trips to said giant grocery store en famille, and that was the worst kind of gong show:

Picture the four of us, largely disgruntled and at least one of us hungry, hurtling through the aisles in an attempt to make good choices and buy everything on our list before someone had a major meltdown and we were forced to leave without anything.)

Enter the life-altering on-line supermarket, where the aisles are empty, there is never a line at the checkout, and you don't have to pay in cash or bag your own groceries.

Yesterday, I ordered everything on my list while nursing my baby and watching my daughter do a 300-piece puzzle.

And then this morning, before I had even finished making my coffee, there was a man at the door with four boxes of fresh food for my family and me.

I was so delighted by the whole thing, I made us a cake for breakfast to celebrate.


Spiced Carrot Breakfast Cake

The disadvantage of this over, say, muffins, is that it takes considerably more time to cook. That said, it also seems to go a lot further (don't ask me why, since the ingredients are virtually the same), and the presentation is awfully pleasing. Besides, who can resist the notion of cake for breakfast?

1c wheat germ
1c buttermilk
2 eggs
1/2c applesauce (unsweetened)
1/3c oil (once again, I use coconut, but any vegetable oil will do)
1/2c agave nectar OR thawed apple juice concentrate
1 2/3c whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp nutmeg
about 2c grated carrots (I grate 2 fairly big carrots - not enormous, but not medium-sized either)
1/2c chopped pitted dates
1/2c chopped almonds
1/2c craisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a tube pan.

Place wheat germ in a large mixing bowl.

Combine buttermilk, eggs, apple sauce, oil, and agave nectar in a large glass measuring cup and whisk until smooth. Pour over wheat germ in bowl and stir to combine.

In a separate large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg. Stir in carrots, dates, almonds, and craisins.

Add flour mixture to buttermilk mixture and stir until just combined. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake about 40 minutes (check after 35), or until a tester inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Cool 10-15 minutes in pan, then run a knife around the sides to loosen the cake and invert it onto a wire rack.

Serve immediately, or let it cool a little longer before serving.

Makes at least a dozen slices.