Honey Art

local honey + bubbles = pretty

Unpasteurized Milk From My Own Cow

Google it: Ontario farmer not guilty of selling raw milk.

That's right. If you buy a share in a cow - as I've recently done - you technically own the cow. You therefore do not buy milk from the farmer but rather pay for room and board and maintenance of your cow. Not only is this a great way of running a farm (just one of many possible forms of Community Supported Agriculture in which the cooperative community takes the risk instead of just the farmer) it has earned me some raw milk.

I'm not a health expert. All I know is that anything raw is usually better than pasteurized or otherwise heated or cooked. The milk is basically still alive; enzymes, bacteria and all.

If you stumble upon the CBC article of the abovementioned Ontario farmer, you might come across this quote: "health officials and the province's milk marketing board, the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, have argued that raw milk isn't fit for widespread distribution". I don't know about this particular farmer but really, wake up people! Widespread distribution of any agricultural product isn't the proper way of doing things. Raising 500 heads of cattle for milk in stressed environments with buzzing machines and no access to the outdoors is far worse than 5 Jersey cows living on a family farm and supplying a small number of community members.

I say fuck industrial agriculture! Support a farmer and your community! It's the only way to undo the destrutive practices of faceless corporations, the relevant ones here (Monsanto et compagnie) who destroy whole ecosystems, have declared all out war on biodiversity and give us crap unsustainable food which relies on a crap unsustainable system.

Great...now I'm all worked up...

PORK BELLY!!!

There are two things which I know for certain are wonderful: 1) my girlfriend and 2) pork belly in all it's forms. Though it seems to be something of a fad in the world of haute cuisine for the working man, I simply love trying something new. While at the market with my girlfriend I saw some unsmoked, uncured pork belly in my favourite meat purveyor's fridge. I said, with a giddy smile on my face, "Is that pork belly?" He said yes. I said "I'll take it!"

Pork belly, for the uninitiated, is the cut of pork with which one makes bacon. I first tasted it at Lot 30 (see previous post) and loved it. It's full of fat and oh-my-god deliciousness. In the hands of my girlfriend, it was marinated in soya sauce, rice wine vinegar, lots of brown sugar and garlic. Popped into the a low oven for a few hours, the whole thing became a chewy and sweet treat that's not as fatty as you'd think. In particular, something in the simple marinade and this particular cut of pork tasted authentically Asian. I can't describe it. You'll have to try.

We served it simply with white basmati rice and steamed veggies tossed in a quick soya sauce, a dap of sesame oil and a bit of oyster sauce. If it weren't for the risk of my arteries clogging up, I would eat this every day for the rest of my life and be a very happy man.

LONG LIVE PORK BELLY!!!

Lot 30, Charlottetown and Poached Salmon Niçoise

Just before the holidays, I proposed to my girlfriend. Though it really hasn't changed anything, we are now engaged. I took her to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. For any of my fellow Canadians and even those interested in visiting Canada, you have to visit Charlottetown. Not only did people look at you and say hi when you crossed them in the street, but they smiled! This is a big deal. Charlottetown and PEI in general was full of great, kind people with beautiful scenery. If we weren't moving back to Ontario in the fall, I'd be moving to PEI.

In Charlottetown, we ate at Lot 30 http://www.lot30restaurant.ca/. The atmosphere was great, with a television over the bar where you could see a live feed of what was going on in the kitchen's plating table...a great idea! The service was also fantastic though I wouldn't expect anything less from Charlottetown. As for the food, it was good. I particularly liked the fact that we took the tasting menu and they didn't give us a choice of what we wanted; they just said, "Is there anything you don't want?" to which my girlfriend said offal (to my dismay). They then presented us with a five course meal where every dish was a surprise. Though the food was good, I found that at times the dishes were overly complicated by too many sauces. The dishes felt like they were competing against themselves; they felt aggressive and lacked the simplicity which is, in my opinion, what higher class restaurants should strive for. I was unsatisfied. Just not thoroughly impressed.

When we arrived back home, I had prepared a little 3 course meal of my own. As is the case when I cook for myself, I tend to make too much. Therefore, when preparing a 3 course meal, it is not useful to have heaping plates full of food; one dish just ruins it for the others. Well anyways, after a whole day of preparation, my first course rolled out. It was Gordon Ramsay's "poached salmon niçoise with boiled quail's eggs". I decided to skip the egg. Despite this, the result was amazing. I love tiny potatoes in cold salads. I don't know what it is about them that just get to me. This salad was composed of boiled small potatoes, blanched green beans, cherry tomatoes, black olives, thinly sliced shallots, all tossed in a basic vinaigrette (olive oil and white wine vinegar) and topped with salmon poached in fish stock, thyme, basil, lemon, and lemon grass. This salad was simple, elegant and delicious. Next time I'll do the egg. I'm sure it would make things even more delightful.

The following coarse was not so much of a hit. First mistake, the previous salad was really big. Secondly, the beans. The recipe is from Cook with Jamie and called "grilled fillet steak with the creamiest white beans and leeks". Being a purist or slow food dude or some other pompous foodie title I could give myself, I thought of doing things the "right" way and not getting lima beans from a can but rather buying them drying and cooking them the good-old-fashioned-way. I don't think I've ever had any luck with dried beans. They never fully cook. Maybe it's because I'm too used to the texture of canned beans but I guess I'll never know.

Anyways, the recipe goes something like this: sweat leeks, thyme and garlic in olive oil and butter; dump in some wine, bring to a boil, add CAN of lima beans along with some water; simmer; add parsley, crème fraîche and olive oil; meanwhile, grill or pan fry steak to desired doneness; serve with a lemon for squeezing. This is a simple enough recipe with nicely matched flavours. Next time, however, I'll go with the can. My bad.

Finally, to round out what I'd planned to be a delicate yet delicious dinner, I served cooked custard ramekins which the French cookbook calls "petits pots de crème". If you can swing custard, there is nothing simpler and more beautiful in the world. It's light and sweet and rich. Just lovely. Here's the recipe.

Petits pots de crème

410ml (1 and two-third cups) milk
1 vanilla pod
3 egg yolks
1 egg
one-third cup caster (superfine) sugar

1. Preheat oven to 140. Put milk in a saucepan. Split the vanilla pod in two lengthways, scrape out the seeds and add the pod and seeds to the milk (or be a cheap cheater and give a little squirt of vanilla extract). Bring the milk just to the boil.

2. Meanwhile, mix together the egg yolks, egg and sugar. Strain the boiling milk over the egg mixture and stir well. Skim off the surface to remove any foam.

3. Ladle into one-and-a-half cup ramekins and place in a roasting tin. Pour enough hot water into the tin to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the custards are firm to the touch. Leave the ramekins on a wire rack to cool, then refrigerate until ready to serve.

Catching up

It's been almost 2 months since my last blog entry. The holiday season, the New Year and a whole slew of details of my daily life have gone by un-journaled. I sometimes wonder about those people in the past who wrote about the daily occurances of their lives as if to make sure that if one day they became a world renowned personality, that future scholars would have material. But I guess any form of journal keeping - blogs included - are a narcissistic practice. I would argue that, in general, people care about the day to day occurances of only a handful of other people. The shallow ones care about those of celebrities or themselves. Most care about those of family and friends.

Above is a photo of one of the cookies we made for the holidays. I called them "The Peanut Butter People" and they'd been attacked by the "Peanut Butter Cup Army". Yes, fun times. The other cookies we made were the shortbread cookies out of Cook with Jamie (awesome!), some pecan balls in which we'd spooned jam, and chocolate macaroons which kept oozing Eagle Brand. Also for the holidays, I'd prepared some tourtières (minced pork meat in a pie crust to which I'd added mirepoix and wine - not to the delight of my family's palate). Anywho, that's the holidays. Onwards!

Making food in a house with roommates

I feel a tad guilty for not being very diligent with this blog. The truth, however, is that I used to cook alot more than what I do now. The reason why I don't cook as much now? Roommates.

Firstly, my girlfriend and I have a third of the fridge space we enjoyed when we lived alone. This drastically limits the size of our groceries which in turn limits the amount of recipes we can make since recipes tend to make for much larger groceries than every day food.

Secondly, my roommates have what I'll call "quirks" when it comes to the kitchen. My way of cooking is usually to take my time whilst listening to the radio or some music. Now with roommates, it seems that when I want to start cooking, they decide they would also like to start cooking. Too many cooks in the kitchen is a literal thing here.

Also, there's the issue of dishes and dirty countertops. There's always dirty dishes. Always. And it seems like an alien idea for my roommates that countertops can be quickly cleaned with a wet dishclothe once they're done in the kitchen. Unfortunately, there's always crumbs and patches of crusty who-knows-what on the countertops.

These factors make it so that making food is limited to what's quick and unimaginative. I don't like a dirty kitchen. I don't like living with roommates...these people who live their lives in what I consider to be my space (although recognising that they probably feel the same about me). The only advantage of having roommates is that it costs alot less for rent and bills. But I've made decisions justified by finances before and it never turned out to be ideal.

I can't wait till I have a real job...

Self-sufficiency and Happiness

It seems to me that self-sufficiency is not only reasonable but probably the best solution for turning away from a North American modern life structured as work to consume then work in order to consume even more ad infinitum. It has come to a point where even governments do not refer to their citizens as citizens but as consumers (i.e. you must consume in order to get us out of this recession!).

If we take into account graphs such as the one above which demonstrate, by association with production, trends in consumption, you realise that we've been consuming at an exponentially increasing rate. This, it goes without saying, is unsustainable. Not only will we achieve a point when we simply cannot produce enough stuff and find places to dump it all (see the satirical movie Wall-E...not just a cute robot movie) but unless you're the one selling the crap, the vast majority are not gaining anything and only paying with the destruction of our environment which, in case you hadn't noticed, is the thing we rely on for life itself. To prove that we're not gaining anything from it, there is a graph in the book Managing Without Growth which demonstrates that in the US, though the "real income per head" has risen from a bit below $15,000 per head in 1945 to almost $40,000 per head in 2005, people haven't reported being anymore happy; to be a bit clearer, about 30% of people are "very happy" at a level of $15,000 per year regardless of increased income above this level. So, why must we embark on this exponential path?

Regardless of the questions of corporate greed and infiltration of government, we all have one advantage over any "power that be"; we are decentralized communities who can be self-sufficient. We don't need their stuff. We don't even need that much government beyond the local. People lived perfectly content lives before the advent of Wal-Mart and the microwave. I believe that simple and comfortable lives are the keys to happiness; excess has nothing at all to do with it.

So what do I mean by self-sufficient? I mean a community of people who, despite almost any calamity, can fulfil their food, shelter, water, clothing and social needs. Think of a rural community before the Industrial Revolution; everyone had a trade which they could barter with in order to provide them with the necessities of life. Nowadays, we've exploded past the necessities and have ventured way too far into the unnecessary excesses. Because regardless of what you may think we only need food, shelter, water, clothing and a community. And, depending on which area of the globe you live in, you may not even need clothing ;)

In September 2010, I'm going back to university in order to become a teacher. I'm doing this because I need to have a decent paying job in order to pay off my student debts. Yes I enjoy working with youth. But I wouldn't have to work with them in the school system if it were not for the debts I'm a slave to. I am not going to be a teacher in order that I can buy myself a lifestyle with the very comfortable salary teacher's make. And once the student debts are gone, I'm reevaluating and deciding whether or not I want to say in the school system. I will have a choice which will not depend on debt; it will depend on what I want to do in order to be happy and it will factor in the minimum of funds I need in order to achieve that simple goal. Whatever the case, it will be a life which is as self-sufficient as possible.