Family, Food and Quilting

One of the Covid 19 memes I recently read said "2020 is a unique Leap Year.  It has 29 days in February, 300 days in March and 5 years in April."  February does seem to be ages ago, and a lot in world has changed since then.

Back at the end of February, social distancing was not part of our regular vocabulary, and gathering with others was normal;  I had the opportunity to gather with a few of my cousins to spend a few days visiting, eating and quilting.

It is always lovely to spend time with extended family who you may not see often enough, catching up and sharing a hobby you have in common.

and I was in charge of Food!  It gave me the chance to dig into several cookbooks that I had not looked at in awhile .  I created the menus from several different cookbooks.  I didn't feature one cookbook a meal but mixed them all up.  I also threw in a few tried and true recipes (I had to have time to quilt!) and we even celebrated Christmas in February that included a traditional Turkey dinner and a snowstorm!

The next couple of blog posts will feature the different cookbooks,  I will only feature one cookbook per post to make it less confusing.

The first cookbook is Mindful - over a 100 Delicious Recipes for Better Brain Health.  by Carol Greenwood, PhD, Daphna Rabinovitch and Joanne Gryfe.  An initiative of Baycrest Health Sciences, a globally respected academic health sciences centres focused on the needs of seniors and the aging population.   It features recipes made with food that assist with brain health, it also includes many tips and tools to help maintain overall health. 

I won the cookbook at a conference several years ago and I hate to admit this was the first time I made anything out the cookbook.  I am not sure why it has sat on my shelf neglected because all the recipes turned out great and I have several more earmarked to try.  

During the get together we had

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Blueberry Pancakes with Ricotta Topping

Summer Rolls with Thai Dipping Sauce

Squash, Spinach & Onion Lasagna

Chocolate Avocado Cupcakes  

Our first day together was Shrove Tuesday or better know as Pancake Tuesday so of course the menu had to feature Pancakes.
Despite the fact that they contained both whole wheat flour and oatmeal, the Whole Wheat Oatmeal Pancakes were light and fluffy,  the Ricotta Cheese was not a typical topping for our group and even though it was tasty,  the local Maple Syrup won the day! (the picture does not do them justice!)
The pancake recipe is my new go to recipe for pancakes, since it makes a more interesting pancake then the typical white flour variety.

Each afternoon was break time for show and tell and of course some treats!

On our second afternoon  the Summer Rolls with Thai Dipping Sauce was the featured treat of the day.  Summer rolls are such a great way to include vegetables in a fun way in your diet (I know I am sounding like such a dietitian 😀).  The real find with this recipe was the Thai Dipping Sauce.  Until this point I had only ever had prepared Thai Dipping sauce, so when I first made the recipe I thought something was wrong because it wasn't the deep red color you typically see.  That is when I realized how much food colouring must be added.  It did eventually take on a pinkish orange hue from the dried red pepper flakes though.   It surpassed my expectations and I will never go back to the prepared Thai Dipping Sauce again.

Supper our last night together featured the Squash, Spinach and Onion Lasagna.  A tasty vegetarian lasagna that is unexpected in its contents with the addition of squash.  Like all lasagnas it is a bit fussy to make but well worth the work.  Lets just say there was no leftovers!

The Chocolate Avocado Cupcakes were intended for the get together,  but I ended up taking them to work before I left - sorry cuz!  The had a nice rich chocolate flavour and were very moist, no icing required; and no one knew they contained Avocados!

During our get together we did a mystery guilt.  A mystery quilt means you are only told the amount of fabric you need,  you don't see the pattern or instructions in advance.  You are given the instructions a section at a time until you have a quilt top.  I am sharing my mystery quilt.  It still needs to be quilted but I think it turned out pretty good!

Easter Food Traditions create normalcy

Happy Easter!

The Easter egg hunts are done and the ears are missing off all the chocolate bunnies.  Easter for another year is a memory.  As has been said more times than enough over the last week, this was a different Easter for most people.

Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, Covid 19,  words not part of our vocabulary before 2020 are now permanently etched in our memories.  A virus that has turned everyones' world upside down, in a way no one would have been able to predict when we rang in the new year.

 In years to come when we look back on 2020 our memories will fall into a couple of very distinct groups.  Those whose world was reduced to their home - work, play, everything.  There are the essential service group who are still going out for work everyday, and those whose jobs disappeared overnight.

I fall into the essential services group!  In many ways,  my life has not changed much,  I still get up and go to work everyday.  I still, like most nights, come home in the evening, make supper,  go for a walk, putter around and go to bed.  So any given day looks the same,  when you look deeper, it is the dance classes, the volunteer work, church, the dentist appointment, the scheduled hair cut, etc that all within a week disappeared off the calendar. Now every weekday is the same as the day before without change.

There were many days when I came home from work having supper, going for a walk and bed is all I can manage and there were lots of day the walk didn't happen.  That first two weeks was a blur at work with multiple changes to how we operate occurring literally overnight,  layered on top of the heightened anxiety level of almost everyone made one day blend into the next. Orientation to date and location is an important thing to do these days 😀.

Now a month later,  it is a bit like a holding pattern.  I am fortunate to live in an area of the country where the the number of cases has been low with only a few needing hospitalization.  We are holding our breaths that it remains the same but ready in case it doesn't.  I work in healthcare,  not on the front lines but still an essential services department within the hospital.  Things are still changing at a moments notice, while we try to get our heads around how long this could actually last.

This long weekend has been a nice break from work.  Four days of not having to do anything or go anywhere is heaven to an introvert.  Though, as we are moving into day four I am almost ready for the routine of work again.  I know "going to work" and that routine is a luxury that many do not have right now.

The blog is supposed to be about new recipes from cookbooks I already have, but this post is about Easter traditions - my personal traditions.  Even though I was spending Easter alone it was important to me to have traditional foods around.  Growing up, Easter Sunday Supper was spent one of two ways with all of my mother's sibling's family for a family potluck.  These potlucks are a blog in themselves - so I will save it for another day.  The other way was with a few extended family members and a meal of Ham and scallop potatoes.

Scallop Potatoes need no recipe,  a simple layering of potatoes onion slices, salt, pepper, flour and butter, until the dish is about 3/4 full ,  cover with milk and place in the oven and bake until potatoes are cooked.  Because it was only me, I just bought a little toupee ham to have.

There was never a traditional dessert at our house, Mom liked to try new dessert recipes each year.  But I decided to go with something tried and true.  I was wanting something light and springy and lemon felt like the right flavour to go with.  It was a no brainer - I LOVE lemon curd.  When I make it I could sit down and eat the whole bowl right away by myself 💖, but I resisted!    The leftover egg whites from the lemon curd went to make the meringue nests.  Topped with a few raspberries and viola a lovely end to the meal.

I didn't have an appetizer, but earlier in the day, I had what has become for me an Easter tradition.  Maple Oatmeal Scones from Ina Garten. I first made these about 20 years ago and they have become an easter staple for me.  Growing up, each Spring my Dad made Maple Syrup and Easter weekend always involved some part of the Maple Syrup production.  At the very least there was sap to collect and frequently it needed to be boiled down to make the syrup.  In my mind Maple Syrup and Easter weekend are inter twined.

These food traditions helped me to add a little normalcy to the Easter weekend at a time when very little is normal for anyone.

I hope you were able to create some normalcy in your life.  I do have cookbooks to write about and depending on what happens over the next few weeks, I hopefully will get back to pulling cookbooks off the shelf and creating menus from recipes I never tried before.

To all of you out there Happy Easter,  Stay In and Stay Safe.