The Ties That Bind....

I love to bake. And I’m somewhat sentimental. Okay, slightly more than somewhat! My childhood is filled with fond food memories as possibly, yours is, also. I have simple memories of eating Rice Krispies sprinkled with sugar on Saturday morning while reading the comics (after having won them from previous readers!). Remember that last little bit of sugary milk in the bottom of the bowl? I can still remember sitting at my Grandma Cott’s small kitchen table on a regular Saturday night’s visit-we were never sent home without a late night snack. So Grandma assembled us at the kitchen table to eat toast with various toppings before climbing sleepily into a car for a short ride home in which we would invariably nod off only to be rudely awakened or hopefully to be carried in while still blissfully asleep. I have wonderful memories of my Grandma McLean’s Date Turnovers-a soft brown half crescent of rolled molasses dough filled with date filling and pressed tightly closed with fork tine prints around the half circle. Oh, how good those cookies were fresh from the oven! I would often run to my Grandma’s house after school instead of coming home and share something with her….my mark on a project or something that had happened at school and she was always there waiting with some kind of food handout in her warm cozy kitchen. I once asked her for the cookie recipe when I was grown. I can remember it like it was yesterday. She opened the old ivory icebox that she used as a cupboard, reached in and took out a teacup with a missing handle and told me that she uses this cup full of sugar and a certain number of it filled with flour…she lost me there and if I could go back in time, I would have persisted and wrote it down anyway. But I didn’t and so for more than 20 years I have searched for that recipe endlessly! I think I may have found something similar and will be sure to blog about it if it turns out like I remember. My kids laughed when I told them about her brown sugar sandwiches-a piece of bread buttered, with one half thickly spread with brown sugar and the other folded over on the sugar and taken from her soft papery skinned hands to be eaten while swinging on the steel porch chair and ruminating on the day’s events.


I have two cookbooks which regularly take me back to my childhood and which I have decided are my most used and useful cookbooks-The wooden Spoon Dessert Book by Marilyn Moore and Jim Fobel’s Old Fashioned Baking Book- you can never go wrong by making something out of them. They contain the Carrot Cake recipe that always wins at the Fair and the Rhubarb Cobbler Recipe that must be made in early June after an early evening dash to the garden for an armload of fresh Rhubarb. And they also have the Strawberry Rhubarb pie recipe that my daughter claims will bring tears to your eyes! I managed to snag the secret recipe my Aunt Joyce used every year to make Uncle Bill’s birthday cake which was a rich chocolatey cake with fudgy chocolate icing. It turns out that it was the $100 cake (also found in said book) which gets its moist texture from mayonnaise which makes total sense-after all what is mayonnaise? Eggs and oil…perfect cake ingredients. Those cookbooks contain all the old recipes that I remember from my childhood plus what my husband calls the mark of a good cookbook…generous splashes of ingredients from previous baking adventures.

I’m up for making food memories for my children. My eldest daughters, who are the first installations in our 2 part family, lived through our juicing/vegetarian/food combing era with not so fond memories of carrot and beet juice escapades and endless pots of vegetable curry with swollen raisins. Their least favourite memory is of being sent off to bed and hearing the toaster flush and the popcorn maker firing up as they lay hungry in their beds! Their best memories were of Bob Evan’s Salad which was a favourite at our house and the Fit for Life Award Winning Potato Salad. Wait? Whose kid’s favourite recipes were of salads? Greek Salad? Carrot Salad? Bean Salad? Curried Chicken Salad? My younger kids have memories of staying at their Dutch Grandma Van Gelderen’s house and having Grandma’s pancakes before bed-thin batter pancakes, thicker than a crepe and fried in hot oil so that the edges bubble up nice and crispy! They are best served with syrup but also good buttered and coated with a generous topping of brown sugar and rolled up into a tube! My kids claim that I don’t make them the same as Grandma Van. My daughter Amy continues my childhood tradition of an after-school treat of toast buttered and dipped in Maple Syrup (we made our own back then so it was cheap and plentiful!). Aren’t the best memories the simplest ones?

My more recent food memories I’ve made for my family involve a Chocolate Cake with Cayenne pepper nicked named the Sex Cake by a family friend (think Johnny Depp and Chocolate!). It always draws complaints from non-heat lovers because it’s such a sexy looking cake which they refuse to eat! Too bad for you! More for the rest of us! The cake increases in moistness and spiceyness as it ages so it is irresistible and scarce by the third day! It's especially yummy with a good helping of vanilla ice cream to balance the heat and sweetness. My mid August meal of ribs, chicken, fried green tomatoes and corn on the cob is a great memory…especially because it takes almost as long to eat as it does to make! Another longstanding food tradition in our family is the Angel Food cake which my mom or I can whip up from scratch in a few minutes. It is best served with Strawberries and ice cream on a muggy July evening. I’ll never forget my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary when we served a dozen Angel Food cakes with bowls of mixed berries that I had bought frozen and thawed. The men were drawn to them in droves all the while exclaiming, “Who picked all these berries?” I laughed, thinking that it’s May, Boys. There are no berries to be picked in May! I think there may have been some early hunter-gatherer instincts kicking in there to attract them to the girl who picked the best berries!



I think that food memories are the ingredients that bind a family together just like eggs and gluten bind a cake. I recently learned how to make a steamed Christmas pudding for the annual Nethercott family gathering, then took it a step further and made Sticky Date Puddings with the butter/brown sugar/ cream sauce-I think it may have almost killed my husband because he developed a blood clot that Christmas! At least that’s what we blamed it on! It was the Sticky Pudding’s fault! A recent addition to my repertoire is a Lemon Poppy Seed Cake which incorporates my husband’s Dutch heritage (his dad was always up for a good piece of cake with a tiny cup of coffee) and goes over well with that side of the family. The family friend that also emigrated from Holland, Tante Annie, loves the cake and shares my husband’s birthday so I always make her a cake of her own which she splits up and freezes and eats throughout the year. At eighty-two she is full of life and asks about the cake every time we meet! It has become a family favourite. I found the recipe in the LCBO cookbook which they publish several times a year. I know, I know…the LCBO…but the recipes are fabulous and few contain alcohol (although I don’t mind a good Rum flavoured  Christmas pudding sauce myself) and is also the source of another favourite, the Legendary Key Lime Squares! The Lemon Poppy Seed cake binds my husband’s Dutch heritage to my Irish one as I pass over the electric juicer for the chipped glass one that belonged to my dad’s cousin, Helen Abbott, and also I’m sure, her grandmother, Susannah Abbott who is my Great-Great-Grand Mother (Helen never married and stayed in the family home with her brother, Isaac and they maintained the farm for their entire lives). As I twist the lemons over the glass ribs I imagine my Great Great Grandmother’s hands on that juicer and think of the recipes that she has made with it. Perhaps she juiced lemons and oranges to make lemonade to take to the fields for the threshing teams my dad remembers…or perhaps she also juiced lemons to make a cake for the family reunions which were so well attended when I was a baby. And then I realize that her hands guide my hands…a woman I know only from a photo.…carrying on family traditions and building memories which may or may not last, but which bind our lives together as inexorably as the eggs and gluten bind the ingredients of our life’s traditions.



The Abbott Family around 1900

L-R: Robert, James,Isaac, May (my Great Grandmother), Susannah, Frank and Gordon.



A Barn Raising at the Abbotts in the late 1800's.









The Infamous Lemon Poppy Seed Cake and the chipped Lemon juicer.







My Daughter Chloe continuing the tradition by helping with the annual baking of sugar cookies.













 

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake recipe: http://www.lcbo.com/lcbo-ear/RecipeController?action=recipe&language=1&recipeID=2547&recipeType=1



Travelling Arkansas

I’ve met some really strange people in my days on earth. Now I’m not saying they are strange in a negative sense-I’m talking in a more literal sense; literal, as in, say, a Charles Dickens’ character. Now if you’ve read any Dickens, or even just watched the movie versions, you’d be aware of some extreme characterization on Dickens’ part. My most memorable; the Jellybys of course, and then there’s Mr Uriah Heep. Does he exist somewhere in real life? And the unforgettable Flora Fitching, who throws her apron over her head whenever life becomes too much for her.

I think the most unusual character that I have encountered in real life is a hired man that worked for my father doing farm work when I was a kid. My dad seemed to be a veritable magnet for Dickens-ish characters. George “Travelling Arkansas” Ogglesby lived his life as a hobo and roamed through my home town in cycles of the work that was available throughout the year. George or “Arky” as he was fondly known was a short little sawed-off man, with attitude to spare and whom was just few fries short of a Happy Meal. He had piercing blue eyes and no neck and his grissly head looked like the end of a pencil eraser from the back. Arky worked the fairs in the fall and thought of himself as a cattleman, although he only tagged along with one of the more prosperous farmers usually to feed, clean stalls and do whatever grunt work needed to be done. If I happened to attend the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto (where I showed cattle as a teenager), Arky could be found sleeping on a bale of hay in the barns on any given night. He was a personable sort of guy if you were on his good side. I personally, I’m now ashamed to say, did not particularly enjoy being seen riding around in my dad’s truck with him, during hay season or when my dad occasionally employed him to help tear down a building (which was one of my dad’s many sidelines of work). The main reason being: Arky had a weak spot-he did not like long hair, or those sporting it. He called them, without doubt and great prejudice: 'Hippies'.

On any Saturday afternoon, on a street corner in downtown Glencoe-the small town from which I hail-Mr Ogglesby could be found, after his own personal sprucing up at the local barbershop (owned by my mother’s cousin-for those who believe I’m personally related to everyone within 50 miles of Glencoe), standing on the curb shouting obscenities at the local long-haired youth (longer than a buzz cut) and repeatedly telling them to get a haircut. Now, George did not usually start into anyone unless he was provoked and this provoking was usually part of the regular Saturday afternoon entertainment in said small town. One of the boys hanging in front of ‘Ted’s’, the local Chinese restaurant/pinball palace, would invariably tell Arky to get a haircut, thereby ‘starting’ him up so to speak, and once started, Arky would take hours to wind down.

Mr Ogglesby would show up at our house during haying season, as he knew my dad bought standing hay, had it cut, and baled (often with me riding the stooker-another posting!) and loaded onto his pickup by Yours Truly and Mr Ogglesby, which meant that I got the pleasure of riding though town, stuck in the middle, between my dad and George, in a pickup towering with bales of hay. George would usually pick this moment to hang out the window and yell at some long-haired offender as we passed by, while I sunk as low as I could around the stick shift! One of the most mortifying experiences of my entire life occurred during one of these expeditions to another local town, when my dad turned the truck too sharply onto Main Street and dumped half the load of hay out onto the street. Boy, if I could have ever crawled under a vehicle and died on the spot, I would have chosen that exact moment!

Another of George’s character flaws was that when he admired young girls-which he often did-he called them Heifers. Now as a member of the fairer sex, this did not often sit well with me, when George would gape out the truck window at a particularly fine specimen and announce, “Now, there’s a nice young Heifer, Jack.”

My most unnerving experiences with George, though, occurred when we were taking a building down on Main Street to make way for a strip mall. A group of youngsters would walk by and there we would be up on the roof. They would yell out, “Hey, Arky, get a haircut!” and he would roar and nearly jump off the roof at them or pick up a brick and throw it at them. Nothing inconspicuous about it, just in case you didn’t want any of the local boys to notice that you were standing on a half torn-down building, wearing a Newbury Dinner Jacket (private joke), work boots and holding a pry bar.

The home place sported plenty of piles of lumber that my dad had trucked home and sold, so Arky would show up there when work was scarce, to pull nails. I think he showed up when he was hungry, actually. Arky couldn’t have been taller than 5’ 2” and perhaps 120 lbs but he did have a rather large belly and a food storage capacity that I’m sure came from long stretches between meals. When he ate at our house, he tended to stock up. Lunch at home always consisted of meat and potatoes and gravy and is still to this day called ‘dinner’ by my parents. My mom would often cook pork sausages and make gravy with it. In the South, they call it ‘white gravy’-I just call it bland gravy-but George loved it. A plate of bread was always set out with every meal at my parents’ and if the meat was scarce as it often was, then you supplemented with a slice of bread slathered with gravy. Now George knew a good thing when he saw it. I think he often walked the three miles from town, salivating the entire time as he thought about my mom’s gravy. George would finish the meat and potato course and then start in on the bread and gravy course. He would take a slice of bread from the stack with a flourish, swoop it onto his plate and carefully and lovingly ladle gravy over it all the while stating, “My, that sure is good gravy, Lois.”

My father, the enabler that he is, would push the plate with the stack of bread, over closer and say, “Help, yourself, George. You never know when you’re going to get another meal.” I swear my mother enabled as well by making extra gravy when George was around. He could eat over half a loaf of bread and the spread of gravy would get thinner and thinner but he would keep going. If there was a trophy for style and stamina in Gravy Eating, George would have taken it-hands down! After dinner, he would push away from the table and thank my mom, then head outside. Dad always said that George didn’t get much done for the first while after dinner because he couldn’t bend over. I never saw him split his pants, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if he did!

My dad liked to tease him about the type of truck he dreamed about. George wanted a two-quarter ton pickup truck. He talked about it often. My dad would ask, “Are you sure you don’t want a half ton, George?”

“Nope! I said a two-quarter ton, Jack!”

George lived through the winter months in a tiny house by the town dump. I’m sure he must have qualified for social assistance somehow but his later years were rough. He developed diabetes and eventually lost a leg. My dad would always buy him a shirt or something useful for Christmas, no matter how little we had and get my mom to make up a package of baking and take it in to him on Christmas Eve. He continued to attend all the fairs in his wheel chair and could still handle a pitch fork. He wanted to be self sufficient. They don’t make them like that anymore. I hated having George around as a teenager. I’m sure I sulked through many meals, begrudging him every slice of bread he took. I know for sure I hated riding around with him in my dad’s pickup. But my dad knew more about George than I did, for all my teenage wisdom. He knew that he was alone in the world with the exception of a few distant relatives. The meals that he ate at our table were probably the closest he ever came to eating with family. My dad also knew that he needed respect. Respect back then was measured often by how hard you were willing to work and George was not looking for handouts. He may not have been the smartest tool in the shed, but he knew the reward and decency of a hard day’s work.

I’m sure that there are those who still remember Arky and pass stories about him; I know I do. I remember him as a real character and in spite of his simple values and low IQ, I respect him now and even more I respect my dad’s uncanny ability to take the Underdog and the Unlovely, make them feel loved and give them that little bit of respect that everyone needs.

Breaking her in-the calf that is!

  Showing my calf at the local fair as a teenager.

My sons with my oldest daughter, modelling the Newbury Dinner Jacket

*White gravy (sawmill gravy in Southern U.S. cuisine) is the gravy typically used in biscuits and gravy and chicken-fried steak. It is essentially a béchamel sauce, with the roux being made of meat drippings and flour. Milk or cream is added and thickened by the roux; once prepared, black pepper and bits of mild sausage or chicken liver are sometimes added. Besides white and sawmill gravy, common names include country gravy, milk gravy, and sausage gravy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravy

The South Will Rise Again!

Yes! The South will rise again! And Again! If I believed in reincarnation-which I do not-then, I would have lived one of my previous lives in the Deep South. Not to say that I am on the side of slavery; I am a true Abolitionist at heart but the South offers us so much. How can we not embrace it? Look at a little of what they have given us. Music-Creedence Clearwater Revival (it just occurred to me that although they have 'clear water' in their name, there is not one iota of it in their music!) Lynyrd Skynyrd! Creators of the National Anthem of the South-Sweet Home Alabama! I'm the girl who stands at attention when Sweet Home Alabama is played and I've never been in the state! Stevie Ray Vaughn-the master of Blues but only one of the latest incarnations of decades of blues that trace their roots to the South. The South is the bubbling center of the melting pot that is the source of many styles of music: Gospel, Blues, Jazz, R and B, Rock-a-Billy, Folk and Modern Rock can all trace their roots way down into the delta.


And the food! One of my favourite things to do in the summer is to put together a meal of barbecued chicken, ribs, corn on the cob and fried green tomatoes. It has to be eaten accompanied by CCR and lots of napkins for wiping fingers! Almost the best thing about the meal is that it takes almost as long to eat it as it takes to make! Imagine! Succulent ribs with the sauce dripping and the meat coming off the bone. Corn; sweet and buttered to within an inch of it's life! My boy, Austen, churning it off the cob like a machine! Crispy fried green tomatoes, dipped in mayonnaise cut with Frank's Red hot sauce, so tangy or sweet, you're not really sure how they taste so you have to have another! "That old black water, keep on movin', Mississippi moon won't you keep on shinin'" thumping in the background with Mr Fogerty's high voice serenading us all back down there.How can you resist his images of "barefoot girls dancin' in the moonlight" or "Bullfrogs callin'?" If you were really from the South, you would have Banana Pudding for dessert, but some homemade Banana Cream pie won't draw any complaints! Or a generous serving of Key Lime Anything!

I have some fond memories of meals eaten in the south. Recently, while driving down to Miami for a cruise, my husband and I drove all day to get the Georgia State line which is just out of Valdosta, Georgia. My first palm tree spotting was right there in the McDonald's parking lot but we were not headed there! Right down the street was a Steakhouse that boasted the best Georgia-grown beef cooked over a wood-fired grill. Now I get excited when I see a stack of wood in any restaurant because that means they're getting down to business! Dolph and I got our hotel room first (good idea) and ordered steaks with a Bloomin' Onion appetizer. Well, that bloomin' onion! It hung over the sides of its own dinner plate! We didn't even get halfway through it and we were done! Literally! I called the waiter and asked if we could have our steaks to go and the cheque with them. Nine hours of driving had taken its toll and that bloomin' onion finished us off. Dolph hit the bed as soon as we got in the hotel. I managed to stay awake long enough to eat a little of my juicy, medium rare steak, but it was steak for breakfast for us!

Another memorable eating event I had in the South was in 1987 when I went to Daytona Beach for Bike Week with my friend Lana from college. We had a tent, a cooler, and $500 American between us and absolutely no plans. When we stopped to change into shorts after we passed the Florida state line, we inquired about where all the bikes on the road were headed, and our destination was set. This was my first visit to Florida and when I saw that it was mostly scrub pine with an abundance of dead coons on the side of the road, I thought, this place is just a swamp? Food was not high on my list of priorities in those days and the only other thing I can remember eating was Nachos on the beach-my very first taste of Jalapeno Peppers! But late one night we were hanging out in a local place of refreshment and the guys we were with decided it was time for some Barbeque. Now if you are from the South, the word 'Barbeque' is synonymous with a pulled pork sandwich, but I was uninitiated in this as of yet. So around 3 am in the morning we rode well out of Daytona into the country (well into the country, I might add). The ride in itself was something. Riding anywhere on the back of a Harley on a warm moonlight night with the ocean breeze blowing through your hair (helmet law!) is an adventure! We pulled into what appeared to me to be someone's little hobby farm with a small barn out back, but the barn turned out to be a smokehouse and grill with a porch on the side that had a serving window-they were open for business. There was a short fence around the building that surrounded permanent tables and benches. I'm sure the fence was there only to prevent some inebriated rider from driving into the diners but it made a great place to park your Harley. So there, in the middle of the night, on some back road outside of Daytona, I had my first 'Barbeque' or pulled pork sandwich and I was smitten! Of course, atmosphere had something to do with the whole experience.

I have been told many times that I should open a restaurant and having spent many years working in them, I know all the untold hours and hard work they command, but if I were to open one, it would be a barbeque joint with a wood fired grill so large it can hold a side of beef! The menu would for sure contain Fried Green Tomatoes; Fried Banana Fritters drizzled with honey and Pork with Mustard and Maple syrup sauce. Mustard Sauce is considered true barbeque sauce in the South and not tomato based sauce so much. The Maple syrup gives it a Northern twang! Now I think a research trip or two may be in order just in case I decide to embark on said venture in the future. I was initiated in New Orleans and Creole food first hand when I worked at the Magnolia Cafe-a short lived restaurant that featured Popcorn Crayfish, Po' Boy Sandwiches, Blackened Catfish and Shrimp Gumbo, but I think that the real nuance of Creole food would be better savoured in some little out of the way place that has been handed down for a few generations right smack dab in the French Quarter! That is where I want to try my first serving of Shrimp and Grits!

I have a video clip from a Redneck convention of sorts produced by James Gandolfini of the Sopranos for the Tonight Show. The event features mud puddle jumping and various grilled foods served on a stick such as Gator and Possum. When asked what Possum tastes like, the toothless attendee replies, "Why it tastes just like chicken." When asked why, then, eat possum, the astonished reply is, "Possum's free!" And yes, I have eaten Possum, but don't recall it tasting remotely like chicken! And tell me: where in America can you shop at a grocery store called the 'Piggly Wiggly'-seriously! Another thing I love about the South is their fierce determination to protect their rights. They even have their own flag to celebrate their alligences. After all, I do come from a gun-toting, coon-hunting, slightly- redneck background. And where else in the world can you buy fireworks on any Tuesday, without a permit, on the side of the road?

Most of my favourite movies feature the south: Sweet Home Alabama (I hold kinship with Felony Melanie), Fried Green Tomatoes, A Love Song for Bobby Long, Driving Miss Daisy and the Grand Pappy of them all...Forest Gump! Recently a friend reviewed Benjamin Button with a scathing review, citing that it was blatant remake of Forest Gump and that it was full of obvious clichés about the South. That's exactly what the south is-one wonderful simmering pot of clichés just begging to be experienced firsthand and proud of it! Well, he's entitled to his opinion but as for me?


"I think I'll go back to my double wide and fry something!"*


 

Fall off the bone, sticky goodness!

Yum! Fried Green Tomatoes

This is serious business!

The bike I wish was mine in Daytona Beach-1987

Taken in S. Carolina 2004

*Melanie's Momma: Sweet Home Alabama.
Lyrics taken from Green River by CCR

Howling at the Moon!

The moonlight shining in the window was so bright that it woke me at 3:30 am. The full moon the night before was one of those huge glowing moons that is accompanied by a sharp deep cold that takes your breath away. I had heard that the moon's position would be closest to the earth that evening so I knew that it would be a full snow moon! However it was also to be the coldest night of the winter so far, the forecast being -15 Celsius, so I wanted to stay in and cozy up with a book!

I love a full moon in the winter. We live in the woods and the moonlight throws strong shadows of the trees across the snow, gleaming in the bluish light. One of my favourite things to do in the winter is to go for a walk with only the moonlight to guide my path. Sometimes you can see the frost hanging in the air like suspended glitter. Everything has a blue tinge and sounds travel for a long way in the clear cold air. Often, I can hear the howl of wolves or coyotes and once heard the whoosh, whoosh sound of the wings of an owl as it hunted its prey in the almost-day light.

So there was no way around it, but I had to get up and sleep would not return as I restlessly churned through the thought that this is an opportunity that should not be missed even though it was a brisk -15 outside! I got out my tripod and 300mm lens, set up my camera, with flashlight tucked under my arm and well bundled against the cold, headed into the back yard shutting off any lights as I went. The dog came out of his Igloo doghouse stiff legged with surprise, wondering why I was venturing out with so many hours to go until breakfast. Finding a spot in the well treed backyard that gave me a clear shot took some time, but I took a few shots first with the trees in silhouette against the huge aura surrounding the gleaming orb. The dog sat and shivered violently as I set up my tripod and focused the camera. He could not understand the reason for this late night visit but was not giving up the pleasure of company despite the cold! I had to return to the house several times with my Flash card to check the results on the computer. There was actually a haze of cloud but the pictures seemed very crisp in spite of it although I did go back out an hour later to find the clouds gone but the moon too dangerously skimming the tree tops for a clear shot. I used the flashlight to focus the lens on the pattern of shadows among the trees but was not very successful-this would need a 500 watt halogen painting light to be dragged from the garage to light the area while I composed the shot. Still it was a good experience-with the shivering dog at my side-and there is still much to be learned but I did capture the moon with all its mysterious shadows and craters.

The whole experience brought back memories as a child of being outside in the winter. We lived on a farm and had livestock to take care of, so on winter evenings I was often outside during those cold frosty full moons. A huge snow bank would drift in behind our house and I loved to lay on it while my father and brother were busy in the barn with chores (which is also where I was supposed to be) and contemplate the winter sky. From the barn came the sound of lowing cattle and the pigs scrapping over their trough of feed. Occasionally in the deep blue winter sky the faint gleam of Northern lights could be seen, but most often it was a huge moon rising over the horizon that captivated my imagination. I tried to take photos with my Kodak Instamatic camera but the picture was always a disappointing tiny white blob on a dark background. The Milky Way would gleam in its sweeping arc and the Big and Little Dipper were always there waiting to be found. Finally more than 30 years later I am able to capture that huge gleaming orb in all its mysterious glory!

My Final Shot of the Moon

My first shot taken through the trees-only the moon and its hazy aura showed through the trees

I decided to capture the shadows of the trees on the snow by setting the camera on bulb-it was a long exposure but needed a bright light to focus the shot first.

At Our House, Broccoli is King!

Oh, the battles that have been waged over the lowly broccoli! The simple pea! The insignificant green bean! But not at our house. At our house Broccoli is King! Broccoli rules! No temper tantrums herald its entrance. No displays of force accompany its place at the dinner table. It always baffles me how so simple an issue raises such heights of passions. I have entertained exasperated and tearful parents' reports of raging battles that have undermined the entire household for months and years on end. They plead with me and beg me to tell them the secret of Broccoli’s long reign at our house. Let me say from the very beginning that as a parent I am responsible for my child's health and welfare. I take this responsibility very seriously, sometimes to the amusement of friends and family. Yes, I have been called an overprotective parent. My oldest son was 1 yr old before he actually came in contact with dirt! However in the area of food, I believe that parents often abdicate this responsibility and feed their children all kinds of processed stuff that hinders their child's health and development. I've been laughed at and told, "Well, we ate it and we're okay." Well, really now, are we actually healthy? North America has some of the highest rates of cancer, diabetes and heart disease in the world. Our children's hospitals are full of children with cancer and other diseases to say nothing of the numbers of children that suffer from rare diseases, asthma, allergies, skin disorders, ADD and ADHD. And I actually wouldn't rate myself as the healthiest person. I have weight issues but my doctor tells me I am as healthy as a horse-not sure if that is a spring colt or a put-out-to-pasture-old-nag! But as a child I didn't eat much processed food. I wouldn't say that my diet was exactly healthy but I did eat vegetables every day. Sugar and pop were rare when I was a kid-juice an occasional treat! But today those foods are consumed in quantity by most children.

With the advent of the internet information is available to us in such incredible abundance and ease of access that we have no excuse. I actually studied for years to learn about nutrition and diet so I could feed my kids well. As well as information the food choices we have today are incredible.

Broccoli was not always king at our house. When I was a child, I didn't know it existed, simply because it wasn't available to the population of small town Ontario in the '60's and '70's. I think I was actually a teenager before I saw my first head of broccoli! It is now one of my favourite veggies! However, I did have access to fresh yellow and green beans, picked straight from the garden, snapped, washed and steamed with a bit of butter and salt and pepper! Yum! My favourite! I was the kid that took the salt shaker to the garden and sat in among the tomato plants, picked them off warm and glowing from the sun, rubbed them on my pants and bit in with the juices running off my chin, salt ready to use in the other hand for the second bite. Asparagus, before it appeared in stores was hunted down in expeditions with my mother and picked wild from patches along the side of the road, brought home, washed and creamed to be served on toast. It was a yearly feast-my mother still doesn't realize that Asparagus is sold in stores! You see, we all know that parents model behaviour for children so if your children will only eat chicken fingers, cheese and pancakes made from a box, what exactly are you eating? My daughter and I have both come to the conclusion that if we were to eat prepared food, taken from the freezer and micro waved everyday for one week, that we would have a sore throat and be feeling tired, drained and suffering a definite lack of energy.

I believe that the first step in good nutrition is breast feeding and we are all well aware of all the benefits associated with the practice for both mother and child. The one area in which breastfeeding relates to feeding children after they are weaned is that flavour of a mother's milk changes with her diet and accustoms the child to different tastes. I also do not feed my babies cereals when they are less than 1 yr. I start them on fruit, then veggies, mostly prepared at home. This gives them adequate nutrition and fibre to start up their tiny digestive tracts. It also allows the infant body time to develop the neccesary enzymes needed to digest starches. After 1 yr, I introduce whole grain cereals and poultry and fish in small amounts. This gets them used to different flavours and textures. You also need a certain amount of discipline. It always amazes me that parents give in so easily to their children. You wouldn't let them play in the street at 2, so why would you allow them to make their own food choices. My children are fed at regular meal times and if they don't try and finish the small portions we give them, then their food is taken away and they are given it at a later time. I've seen parents take their children's unfinished food away, then present them with cookies and juice in return. You have to be firm and don't give in to their crying, begging and pleading. You might wish to die when listening to their complaints but they will surely not die no matter how much of a fuss they make! I've also found that when most children see a new or different vegetable they will turn their nose up at it, but if it is cooked properly and tried, they will like it. My older children have told me that they didn't like squash or some other veggie as a child but they ate a small portion of it then and now they like it. There are also different ways of presenting veggies to children. It's been my experience that they most love raw veggies with dip and if my kids are pigging out on raw veggies, I don't really care if they eat a little high fat dip with it-the vitamins and raw enzymes they are consuming far out way the detriment of the fat. I also let them pick new veggies out at the store to try or make it fun. My children love to help me prepare artichokes and love to eat them-they are unusual, but fun to eat!

It is also apparent to me that most picky children have learned the habit at home. I see parents turning their nose up at food and wonder why they don't understand why their kids are so picky! Remember that Broccoli? Well, you still will not see it on my parent’s table because my mom claims that my dad doesn’t like it. However, for some reason he eats it at my house. Hmmmm. Another veggie he did not like was squash, however it did not prevent my mother from cooking it. He always remarked that you should cook it on a plank, feed the squash to the pigs and eat the plank. All my kids love squash!

I have my ways of getting things in there. My mother-in-law was serving spinach that she boiled (to within an inch of its life!) and my children asked her what it was? She was amazed and asked me why I didn’t cook spinach for my kids. I replied that they had been eating it for years but didn’t know it! I layer it in Lasagne and oh, how they love Lasagne! My favourite way to cook Spinach now is to saute chopped garlic in olive oil with halved Grape Tomatoes, Ground Pepper and Basil, then when the tomaoes are softened, I stir in Baby Spinach! Yummy and the smell is amazing! Try it on pasta with White Sauce! For interesting ways to incorporate veggies into your kids food check out Jessica Seinfeld’s book: Deceptively Delicious. She hides things like pureed beets, squash and sweet potatoes in muffins, cookies, brownies and even Mac and Cheese in order to get the veggies into her kids.

The other thing that is so amazing about veggies besides the cool shapes and colours are the names. After all, what more fun names can you think of than Zucchini? Asparagus? Cauliflower? Cucumber? Time to go-off to make some Baked Potatoes with Broccoli and Cheese sauce for supper!

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

1/2 cup soft margarine
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini (remove pulp and seeds but do not peel)
1/2 cup sour milk
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
4 Tbsp cocoa
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves

Beat margarine, oil, eggs, vanilla and sugar until well blended. Beat in zucchini then add flour (mix dry ingredients together first) and milk alternately until blended. Bake at 350 ' in a greased 9 x 13 pan or bundt pan. Bake 35-45 minutes until done. Ice with Cream Cheese icing.

Taken from: St. Paul's Lutheran Lady's Cookbook

My kid's favourite vegetable!

The Official Coming Out of Brand New Consumers

I may have done my children a disservice. Or may not have depending on your view. My 2 oldest sons are now respectively 15 and 14. They are earning their own money and have recently developed an appreciation for style and its fickle devices. As a stay at home mother of seven, my forays into the world of shopping and malls have been negligible. You'd think that having a degree in fashion design would have prevented such a serious state of affairs but it is true; I have sadly neglected my children's' training in the language of mall crawling. That is not to say that my children have ever been poorly dressed; in their early years when I had time to sew (really?), I was guilty of dressing them in hand made outfits designed to mark them out as siblings and guaranteed to make them easy to spot in a crowd at church. Sadly, they harbour serious angst of the memory of such display but at the time it seemed they enjoyed the matching vests made of frog-covered cotton, corduroy pants with suspenders and matching bow ties. I must admit that until last week, my most recent trip to the mall with them for a serious shopping trip occurred when the youngest-now 8- was safely ensconced in a stroller and the older 4 securely fastened to it with dire threats. We paraded through the mall amidst stares and repeated congratulations of bravery, kudos and possibly amazement and stupidity. "What? You are here shopping alone with 5 young children? The week before Christmas? Are you mad?" I must admit though, that I, myself, am a serious shopper. In order to provide food and shelter for such a swarm I know how to spot a deal, wrangle a cheaper price and knock off the tax or get something thrown in for free! Feigning heart failure (I learned that from my Aunt Mary), the ability to turn blue or just nonchalantly walking away can do wonders when purchasing several thousand dollars worth of stuff! Over 29 years of building houses and pricing jobs has bought me some experience.
In recent years, I have found that it has been cheaper to shop at the big 'W', 'Z' (if you are American, think 'bulls eye'-there you have it), outlet stores and second hand stores. However, recently I have realized that now that the oldest are in men's sizes and in possession of their own fistful of dollars, they can provide their own flights of fantasy.
So, enter American Eagle. Literally. Well, first I had to find the place-wow, the mall has changed in the last 5 years! Why do they keep changing the position of the stores? Does it have anything to do with the reason groceries stores do not stock soup in alphabetical order? Do they think that we'll unerringly shop at at new store simply because it occupies the same real estate as one that we shopped at 5 years ago? Of course. We are cattle. Driven to hand over our hard earned dollars with glazed eyes filled with giant sized images of life ecstatic wearing the latest gear. Well, we were guilty. I want my children to be liked and admired just as any other self respecting parent, so I led my son, Jacob, to the slaughter-gift cards and cash gripped in his tight little fist. Yes, Jacob is the saver of the lot; the one who has the largest bank account and the nicest stuff! Eliglible young women take note! However, he is the least talkative of the lot and was overpowered by the quantity of stuff, the selection of sizes and-what!-at least one dozen different styles of jeans! Washes! Cuts! Rise! Ripped! Ripped? Hey, I've been throwing those out! And they are $20 more than their respectable, unfaded, unwashed, unripped neighbour! I thought Jacob was going to disown me when I told the salesperson that we would take the unripped, newest looking, cheaper version and take the belt sander to them in the garage for five minutes! We would have ripped jeans for 30% off and could control our own version of the rips! Sadly, I was almost laughed out of the store, but not before I dropped $60 on the sale rack, mind you! My oldest boy, Levi, needed some AE labelled-low-rise-in an inseam length that is respectable-jeans! After all, he is 6 foot and I even I understand that floods are NOT cool!
So, Jacob paid his dues and is now counted among the fashion conscious sporting the necessary labels. He even survived the embarrassment of shopping with his mother and actually thanked me for it later (such a sweet boy!) I realize that my children are sadly un-savy consumers and am prepared to remedy that by sending them to the mall with their friend, Gracie. She knows all the 'best warehouses' (to quote Jane Austen) and where to find dark, skinny, ripped jeans. And I shall continue my forays into those other 'Big Letter' stores until the younger set realize that they too have been mislead by their mother for all those years!




Matching sailor outfits for my son and daughter of a friend.



At one point in time this was considered cute!



Yes, those are frogs on those vests!



Vested interest. Paternity established!

A Wintery Blast

I love a storm. My windows are blasted with snow and I can hear the wind piling drifts against the back of the house. It's cozy and warm inside. The wood stove (our primary source of heat) is radiating warmth nicely and my lined Ikea curtains on the patio door have been closed against the onslaught! I know that there are people that need to go out in the weather and I should feel guilty but I don't. I feel safe and warm and strangely cocooned. The best thing to do besides curl up on the couch with a really thick novel and a fuzzy throw is to make a steamy pot of soup and some biscuits. An occasional check of the satellite imagery of the offending squall is a prerequisite as are text messages to check accumulations in other necks-of-the-woods. Otherwise the day is complete!

We haven't had any really good storms lately. The last in recent history was an ice storm in 2007-before that we had one in 2003. It lasted 3 days and cancelled my son Adrian's 6th birthday. He was upset, but I consoled him with the promise that in a string of childhood birthdays, this is the one that would go down in history and be remembered as the one in which the candles on the cake were not a tradition but a necessity. The hydro was out for 2 or 3 days and we had limited wood piled ahead in our basement. The most exciting part of that storm was the adventure of diving towards the woodpile for armloads of wood while ice and small tree limbs from a large overhanging Maple exploded on the ground around us.

We always have heat and we own a generator-albeit a loud one!- so we crank it up in the garage and watch a movie or make a pot of coffee; the drone of the generator competing with the wind and necessitating the turning up of the volume on the TV. Waking in the night to the strange, deadened silence of cessation of wind marks the end of the worst. The sound of my neighbour's tractor backing down the laneway with an 8 ft wide snow blower releasing us to the outside world jolts us back to reality.

When I was a child, we had longer and more deadly storms. One year, in my pre-teen years, we had an ice storm in which the entire area was crippled. There was a huge Willow tree in my backyard that was a close childhood friend. It's large unruly arms were perfect for reading a book in or for hiding from my mother when I was in some kind of trouble. During that storm I lay awake and listened helplessly as it died in the night; ripped literally limb from limb with the brute force of ice and wind. The hydro was out for days and our local town was impassible; trees littered every street and my father and brother went to work with chainsaws releasing hydro lines and trapped cars from the icy grip of fallen trees. My father suffered his only chainsaw accident in that storm (which should allay some of my fears when using one) in all his years of cutting wood when the saw caught on a branch as he was cutting overhead and kicked back, slicing a jagged cut across the back of his hand.

When I was a teenager, we had a blizzard that was so bad, we tied the proverbial rope from the house to pump house to barn so we could find our way back and forth. Livestock always needs to be fed and a sow would invariably decide to litter in the midst of such a storm. That year, the roads were so bad that my dad and I donned snowmobile suits and drove the tractor to town to get supplies-me perched on the hitch for the entire ride-thanking my stars above that I was so bundled that I could not be recognised by my friends! My dad drove snowplow part-time and in that storm a local back-road intersection in a deep gully was blown so full with packed snow that it took several hours for the grader to ram through it to get an ambulance to a sick neighbour. The memories of holding the flashlight while my father fixed frozen water lines with stiff fingers or chopping holes in ice-covered troughs in order to water livestock are buried far deeper than the more nostalgic ones of number of days without school or hydro. I think today, with satellite imagery and better equipment, we are more prepared and can dig out more quickly than in those days. However, the feeling remains the same; some deep, buried instinct causes me to snuggle in and enjoy the warm, cozy feeling of having a roof over my head, solid walls around me and the glowing warmth of my wood stove deep in the heart of my home.

Mother Superior's Best Barley

2 tsp vegetable oil
1 pound boned chicken or turkey breasts, cut into cubes
1-1/2 cups each chopped celery and chopped carrots
1 cup chopped onions
4 cups low-sodium, reduced-fat chicken broth
1 can (28 oz) chopped tomatoes, undrained
1/3 cup pearl barley
3/4 tsp dried majoram
1/2 tsp each ground thyme, sage, salt and black pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add turkey cubes and cook until no longer pink. Add all remaining ingredients. Mix well. Bring soup to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 30-35 minutes, until turkey and barley are tender. (don't skip the fresh parsley if you can help it-it makes the soup)
Makes 6 servings.

From: Looneyspoons Cookbook by Janet and Greta Podleski

Whole Wheat Biscuits

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt

4 Tbsp cold butter or margarine

1 cup milk

In mixing bowl put flours. baking powder, sugar and salt.

Add butter. Cut into dry ingredients until mixture is crumbly.

Add milk. Stir with fork until soft dough is formed. Turn out on lightly floured surface. Knead gently 8-10 times. Roll or pat dough 3/4 inch thick. Cut with 2" round cookie cutter (I use a drinking glass). If cut in squares or triangles, no re-rolling is necessary since no dough is left over. Arrange on ungreased baking sheet, close together for soft sides, 1 inch apart for crisp sides. Bake in 450'F oven for 12-15 minutes until browned. Serve with butter. Yield: 10-12 biscuits.

From: Company's Coming: Muffins and More by Jean Pare

Ice storm of 2007

On a Winter's Day!

Powder in my face!

The crunch of snow underfoot. A glitter of frost dancing in the cold air. The rush of wind in your face as you fly down the hill. The unexpected tangle of limbs and sled at the bottom of the hill. If you have lived in Southwestern Ontario in the winter, then you have undoubtedly gone tobogganing as a child. It is a Canadian institution and a staple at our house in the winter; synonymous with skates, shinny and sticking your tongue to a metal post! Every year I make the trek to a local hill called Killer Hill with my kids. We go as often as possible and make the most of every visit-inviting friends and family alike. Our hill is a double hill with the top section being faster and more dangerous than the lower section. It has cow paths angled down the sides and one year my youngest son threw his inflatable into one of the tracks and flew down the path only to collide with an unsuspecting parent enjoying a cup of hot chocolate on the side of the hill. She lifted right off her feet and landed, hot chocolate and all on top of my son. Thankfully, the inflatable and my son cushioned her landing so no one was seriously hurt. At that moment I did not actually acknowledge him as my flesh and blood but perhaps my obvious enjoyment of the scene made it apparent to her who he belonged to. That year we had a larger inflatable that could hold approximately 8 young people and be easily made airborne if a large ramp was provided. Oh, what we would have done for such a conveyance when I was a kid! Only one trip to the hill resulted in injury. One year my second oldest daughter broke her thumb while riding with a friend. Perhaps it was because it was a strange hill and not our usual haunt. I took her to the doctor and watched him return the thumb to its rightful position on her hand. Not a scene I ever care to see again!
When I was a kid we tobaggoned on a hill close to a small country church with as many cousins and aunts and uncles as could be mustered on a Saturday afternoon. Wooden toboggans were the weapon of choice to conquer the hill! Our small black Lab, Daisy May, loved the sport as much as we did. She fought for the best position and sat proudly in the front of the toboggan, ears flapping and eyes squinting against the inevitable spray of powder, then sprang free of the mass of tangled children to grasp the rope in her mouth and drag the toboggan back up the hill. It wasn't that she wanted to be a help-she just wanted to get the thing back to the top of the hill as quickly as possible so she could ride again. In those days we may have had a sleigh with runners and steering or a metal flying saucer like the one that removed the bottom half of my brother's tooth when caught by the wind, but we were far more likely to have a cardboard box or piece of heavy plastic to aid our haphazard flight down the hill! If we could not make it to the local hill, then any slope would do: the bank of the local railroad tracks, a deep ditch that may have ended in a possible cold, wet landing or even the pile of snow pushed to the side of the laneway with the tractor. Was it just my imagination fuelled by a small stature or was there actually more snow when I was a kid? We had no high tech waterproof mittens or snowsuits with velcro wind flaps. Every conceivable winter accessory was made out of materials designed specifically to trap and melt snow and increase numbness, loss of feeling, chapped cheeks and frozen extremities. But we were a hardier lot than today's kids! We braved the cold for longer hours, in deficient outerwear and trekked farther afield in search of higher slopes.
These days we load the van to overflowing with various devices designed to hurtle you down the hill harder and faster. We never take drinks to the hill as drinks fill the bladder and filled bladders need to be emptied! However, we put the kettle on as soon as we return home and produce mugs of steaming hot chocolate with islands of melting marshmallows to scoop out with a spoon. In the old days, hot chocolate didn't come in a single serving package and I prefer to make it for a crowd in the same manner we made it as children-in a pot on the stove with milk, cocoa and sugar, brought to a near boil and whisked to creamy perfection. Something to wrap your tingly fingers around to thaw as you collectively replay the best runs of the day.

Hot Cocoa

Makes one cup.

1 Tbsp cocoa

1 Tbsp sugar

pinch salt

1/3 cup water

2/3 cup milk

Mix cocoa, sugar and salt in a small saucepan. Slowly stir in water. Heat and stir over moderately low heat until mixture boils then boil slowly, stirring constantly, 2 minutes. Add milk and heat to scalding but do not boil. About 190 Calories per serving.

Cocoa for a Crowd

Makes 12 servings.

Mix 3/4 cup cocoa with 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 tsp salt in a large saucepan. Gradually stir in 1 qt warm water, set over low heat and heat, stirring occasionally, 8-10 minutes. Add 2 qts milk and heat to scalding. Serve in mugs, sprinkled, if you like with cinnamon or nutmeg or topped with marshmallows. About 190 calories per serving not including toppings.

From: The Doubleday Cookbook by Jean Anderson and Elaine Hanna