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.

Evolution of "healthy" cookbooks

I seem to be behind again,  the fun part of this project is preparing the recipes and eating!  But part of the project was to blog about it all,  so I will attempt to catch up over the next couple of days.

The next cookbook I am going to feature is Anne Lindsay's Lighthearted Everyday Cooking. 
When it was published I was just finishing up my university program and on my way to become a dietitian, beginning to collect "healthy" cookbooks as a resource for my future career.

It is interesting to look back at "health" cookbooks over the last 30 years to see the evolution of the health messages based on the latest research that was available at the time or based on the health concerns.  If someone has not already done an evaluation, I think it would be a fascinating thesis topic.

My copy of Lighthearted Everyday Cooking is well used, having tried many recipes at the time.  "Chinese Noodle and Mushroom Soup", "Easy Everyday Chicken Stir-Fry",  and "Citrus Sangria" made frequent appearances on my table at the time and the Lemon Tea Loaf recipe is still a go-to recipe.

Anne Lindsay always provides great tasting recipes with simple instructions and easy to find ingredients that allows anyone to put a great meal on the table.  Over the years I have picked up several more of Anne Lindsay's cookbooks simply because she was the author.  Like a great fiction author you continuously go back to the ones that give you a great experience.

After not looking fully through the cookbook in years, it was hard to narrow down which new recipes I was going to prepare.  (O.K. I admit I made the Chinese Noodle and Mushroom Soup and Lemon Tea Loaf just because 😀 ).  I know I say this about every cookbook, but I think that is part of the reason why I stared the project,  there is so many great recipes it is hard to choose; whether it is a new cookbook or one you've had forever (unless it is the only cookbook you have 😃)

I started with the Green Onion Dip, a quick, easy dip to have with vegetables especially if you like green onions.

I moved onto Microwave Sole with Mushrooms and Ginger.  To me, the microwave has always been a way to re-heat food, I never really embraced it as a method to cook food - usually disappointed with the results.  This time I was pleasantly surprised - the microwave cooked the fish to perfection without drying it out or over cooking.

The picture doesn't do the outcome justice,  I had pared the fish with some brown rice and steamed broccoli.  Which made for a quick supper which I will try again.

My choice for the dessert recipe had more to do with apples that needed to be used up rather than just picking a recipe.  But that is a reality of cooking, sometimes plans have to change to make sure food is prepared/eaten before it is spoiled to cut down on food waste.

Baked Apples with Maple Yogurt Sauce allowed me to use some apples that were starting to shrivel up, but once prepared looked fine.  It is also one of those quick desserts that you usually have all the ingredients on hand so can be done quickly if you suddenly want dessert but were not planning to have one.   This time I didn't follow the microwave instructions but stuck with the regular oven!

I also made Smoky Sausage and Lentil Soup for lunch.  It was a cold weekend when I was reviewing/preparing the recipes and a nice bowl of soup is a good way to warm up.  This soup was a great one for that - thick and harder that had great flavour even after only a short simmer.

Gatherings & Book Clubs

I picked up the cookbook Gatherings Bringing People Together with Food about 4 years ago.  I was out in Alberta for a conference but took a few extra days for vacation, while I was there.  First, in Waterton Lake area of Alberta.  If you have not visited this area of Alberta I highly recommended it.  The Waterton Lake area is as beautiful as the much more acclaimed Jasper and Banff area of the province but a lot less touristy.

From there I travelled onto Calgary to spend a day or so with a colleague I had meet through our mutual time on a National Board.  She gave me a tour of the "food" side of Calgary, starting with lunch at a new restaurant that was making a name for itself on the Calgary food scene.  Among our stops that day included the Cookbook Co Cooks store.  I was in heaven.  As a foodie, even if we had been there all day, I don't think it would have been enough time for me to to fully appreciate the store.  With only an hour,  I grabbed a cute little rolling pin, a couple of interesting spice mixtures and a cookbook (of course).
I decided to grab a local author cookbook and on Kristyn's recommendation grabbed Gatherings Bringing People Together with Food by Jan Scott & Julie van Rosendal.  

I have been following Julie van Rosendal on twitter for about a year now and picked up her recent cookbook Dirty Foods - sticky, saucy, gooey, crumbly, messy, shareable.  Not realizing I already had one of her cookbooks. She is a cook, cookbook author, writer, podcaster, and an overall culinary explore.   If you are looking for interesting insights on food,  Julie van Rosendal is someone to follow.

Gatherings provides ready made menus for all kinds of fun gatherings where food would be featured - Weekend Brunch, Kid's Birthday Parties, Backyard BBQs, Pie Party and Retro Game Night - just to name a few.  All with fun, inventive recipes, some sections also provide hosting information.  If you never thought of having a Pie Party before there is information on How to Host a Pie Party!

Since everything was grouped I just picked a menu and choose the "Book Club"  menu which included:

Garlic Bread Focaccia

Spicy Maple Caramel Corn

Hoisin Pork Lettuce Wrap

Bourbon Blondies with Pecans and Chocolate Chunks

I have never made caramel corn of any kind before.  Always assuming it would be too hard.  This was a very tasty easy to make caramel corn and the contents of the bowl disappeared in a flash. 

I have made a few things with Hoisin sauce before,  but it was usually one of many seasonings in the dish.  In this dish Hoisin was the main flavour - I have come to the conclusion I don't like Hoisin flavoured items.  The dish overall was fine and others liked it, but it wasn't for me. 

The Blondies were an absolute hit.  Easy to make, with a hint of bourbon they will certainly be made again.   I am debating now between having a Pie Party or a Retro Games Night!  I can't try out the the menus with my next book club because I am participating in a Virtual Book Club with people across Canada.  I guess I will just have to figure out how to ship the food out before hand! 

Festive New Year's Day

I always like to have a special meal on New Years Day.  I think starting off the first day of the New Year with good food is an indication of how you will eat the rest of the year!

Growing up,  my mom's side of the family always had a big potluck on New Year's Day.  Though we would see most of them over the Christmas season it was New Year's Day that the extended families would all gather.  My mom was the oldest of 8,  and there could be easily 30 people or more in attendance.  The numbers kept changing over the years, as new family members were added by birth or marriage or some moved away and could not always be around for New years, like me.

But there was always lots of food no matter how many people attended.  My mom and aunts were all great cooks.  The potluck always had perennial favourites, plus some new dishes every year.  To run out of food would have been a fate worse than death for this group, everyone could eat (with seconds if you wanted) have a night lunch before you left for the evening and come back the next day for leftovers.

I miss those family get togethers,  so that is probably the same reason I like to have a special meal on New Years day though with a smaller number of family.

After all the cooking over the holidays,  I wanted something that was fairly easy to make but still seemed special.

I veered away from my holiday themed cookbooks and grabbed Micheal Smith's Back to Basics

Now you might think a "Basics" cookbook is not going to work when you want something "special", but as you will see I was able to put together a very nice meal with a fun twist for the dessert, that did not require a lot of work or ingredients.  Many of the ingredients were already in my cupboard.

I started with Bottomless Pot of Steamed Mussels.  Mussels are one of my favourite quick suppers when I don't have much time, pick them up on the way home from work with some crusty bread and within about 10-15 minutes of getting home supper is ready.  This time I tried a "new" flavour combination to cook them in - wine.  Though I have often eaten mussels cooked in wine at restaurants, at home I usually stick with seasoned water.  It just made them a little more special

Then we turned to the main course of:

Pan Seared Scallops with Tomato Caper Relish

Prosciutto Roast Asparagus

Whole Wheat Spaetzle with Baby Spinach 

The asparagus and scallops were simple to make and very tasty.  The spaetzle was tasty, with the spinach adding a nice contrast, but I was a bit disappointed in the making of the spaetzle.  I don't have a spaetzle maker, but the recipe provided instructions on how to make it using a colander. I did not have a lot of success with this method.  I guess, my dough was a little too stiff for making the spaetzle in the colander , so I ended up with uneven pieces as I just dropped bits of the dough in the water.  It still tasted very good if presentation was a little off!

I finished off the meal with a fun dessert.  After all the cakes, squares, chocolates and fancy desserts of Christmas I wanted something sweet but fun.  So I settled on Toasted Marshmallow Milkshake!  

The toasted marshmallows gave the milk shake a nice smokey flavour.  I thought it would be kind of sticky and gooey but the marshmallows blended into a smooth drink. 

 It made for a relaxing ending to the meal.

Everything on the menu was tasty and easy to make, the only downside was that many o the dishes required last minute prepping or cooking just before serving.  For me it made the meal a little more hectic than I would have liked.  But I would certainly make all the dishes again, but I think I will try to find a spaetzle maker before I try it again.

As for the book itself Back to Basics,  it was actually the first time I cooked from it.  I am not sure how it came to be in my collection.  I am guessing I just picked it up one time, but it doesn't even look like I cracked the spine on the book which is unusual.  I do have a couple other Michael Smith so may just have picked it up because it was a Micheael Smith.  I hope to features some of this others soon.

The cookbook  has been out a few years, but still available for print,  I would recommend adding it to your collection if you don't already have it, as it provides, like the name says, a lot of basic dishes that everyone should know how to make but adds some fun twists to make them ore special.

Christmas Tea

In the lull between Christmas and New Years it is nice to just take an afternoon to relax with neighbours and visit. A little food always helps the conversation flow, and an afternoon tea fit the bill.

Christmas Teas of Comfort and Joy came into my book collection I think threw a gift exchange / yankee swap of some sort. It has little stories to go with the 6 different menus featured in the book.  Each menu is for a different type of occasion.  There are lots of victorian style pictures.  It is a cute little book to look through over the holidays.  

I have never made anything out of the book before,  it was kind of a coffee table book that I put out at Christmas.  Many of the recipes are based on using packaged mixes that are enhanced, but it can give someone any idea for a tea, though some sounded interesting.  It was more fun to look at the book than make anything, as I felt it was more of a novelty book than a cookbook.

I decided this year it would be one of my cookbook picks and rather than selecting my own menu, I picked one of the pre-set menus from the book.  When we typically think of an English Tea or a Victorian tea, we think of dainty sandwiches, small tarts (both sweet and savoury), scones with clotted cream and jam and one-bite sweets.   Though some menus fit more into this category I picked a menu that didn't match this concept.

I picked the Family Traditions Tea Party, which featured the following menu:

Fruit Salsa

Assorted Cheeses

Christmas Tree Bread

Ham Filled Sandwich Spread

It was an easy menu to put together,  I did add some of my Christmas sweets (which you have seen in other posts) to round out the selection.  People could eat as little or as much as they wanted. 

If I made the fruit salsa again I probably would cut out the brown sugar,  it also had apple jelly in it which I think would make it more than sweet enough.  

The dough for the bread required little kneading and only one rise before baking.  The recipe did call for icing but I skipped this step so you could have the buns either as a savoury or a sweet option depending on what you ate with it.  

Afternoon teas are a relaxing way to spend an afternoon with family and friends.  This menu and really all the menus in the book showed really you can offer anything you like for "Tea". 

Boxing Day Feast

I spent the Christmas holidays with my brother and his family.  It was a wonderful time to catch up with family,  I had the opportunity to see both my nephews and their families.  As well as some of my sister-in-laws family.  I have 3 great nephews/nieces, age 7, 4 and 1 years of age which added to the festivities.

To ease the workload everyone takes turns with making a main meal.  My turn was on Boxing Day and I grabbed The Complete Christmas Book from Canadian Living.  After having our fill of Turkey on Christmas I tried to go in a totally different direction and choose fish for the main course, with a sit down appetizer.

I have been trying very hard to actually follow the recipes as printed.  I have a tendency to make some edits.  I have been doing good up until recently, but the edits were just minor!

To start the evening off, as people arrived I made the White Cranberry Mulled Wine, it provided a nice  light warm drink that helped remove the chill from being outside.  I served the mulled wine with some sweet & spicy nuts.  The nuts were not in this recipe book.  I had them earlier in the month at a potluck and just loved them and had made several batches over the holidays.

As mentioned the next course was a platted appetizer, so once everyone was at the table we served the Mushroom Cheesecake with a small green salad.   This was a twist on a typical cheesecake, most at the table had never had a savoury cheesecake.  It made for an interesting appetizer.  A small portion went a long way and the mushroom provided an earthiness to the dish. Even my 1 year old great-nephew enjoyed some of the cheesecake!

The main course was a Seafood Salmon Roulade.  I served it with Asparagus with Lemon & Hazelnuts and festive rice (white rice with chopped green onions and red peppers).

To make the the salmon roulade you had to basically butterfly a salmon fillet.  Which is easier said than done.  If you every tried cooking at someone else's house it is always add an extra challenge because you don't always know what they have to cook with.  Fortunately my brother also enjoys cooking so he had good sharp knives which made the job easier.  Once butterflied you stuff it with the seafood (shrimp/scallops) mixture and roll it up to bake.  It is served with a Lemon Tarragon Beurre Blanc, that is why in the picture you can't see the "jellyroll" of seafood in the salmon. 

I had planned to make Green Beans with Lemon & Hazelnuts, but when I did the groceries there was no green beans but a great sale on Asparagus.  Just goes to show it is easy to make substitutions when needed.  

To round out the meal, I wanted something light to serve with the holiday sweets that are abundant this time of year.  Earl Grey Pots de Creme was just the ticket with a small ingredient adjustment.  I had "Nutcracker" tea bags and thought that would add a seasonal flair to the dessert.  The Pots de Creme where baked in some of my mother's china tea cups.  

You rarely see China Tea Cups being used anymore,  as a child I remember attending baby and bridal showers with my mom.  The hostess always had out her best china cups.  When we travelled Mom would often get a tea cup as a souvenir.  In the days before disposables, china tea cups were the "in" thing.  Now they hide in the back of cupboards or on the shelves of second hand stores, as people declutter.  

Maybe we can start a trend as move towards more reusables and bring back the China Tea cups!  It is nice to see them out being used.   I have a friend that gives them a second life as candle holders, or if you are a "Fancy Nancy" fan, like my great-niece and having a tea party for your 4th birthday - you need china tea cups - the real thing!