Staycation Baking

After all my experiments with gluten free baking I had to go back and get a fix of baking with wheat flour. After all, it is Spring Break and my son won't eat most of the gf experiments. He requested we make Alton Brown's pretzel recipe which was a lot of fun.

I made some blood orange sticky buns and decided to use the dough recipe to make buns with saffron and cardamon. These remind me of my mom's Easter bread she bakes in coffee tins or braids and bakes with Easter eggs on top. My mom makes really good bread and buns.

I also made some lime curd which tastes good on the saffron buns. I find that making the curd with honey gives it a deeper flavor. I used honey infused with lemon verbena leaves.

My son loves muffins so I made a couple of batches. These are orange carrot chocolate chip. I like using and reusing those silicon cupcake "papers".

This morning I decided to make oatmeal cookies and I added one half cup of hemp hearts to the recipe. Next time I'd add some hazelnuts as well. Considering it snowed this morning, it's no wonder I am celebrating Spring with a baking marathon! Oh look, the sun has just come out. It's time to head out into the garden!

Pssst: Speaking of baking, check out Amy Jo Ehman's charming story of a bakery in a small prairie town called Consul, Saskatchewan. (You'll have to scroll down one post.)

Spring Baking Experiments

I've been experimenting with some gluten free baking. I do love buckwheat brownies. The earthiness of the flour goes really well with chocolate.

Ules was assembling little ships off the coast of Florida on our vintage tablecloth.



I also made some matcha coconut moths and bergamot glazed lemon sugar cookies made with Beta 5 bergamot marmalade. I tried using that gluten free AP flour that Bob's Red Mill makes, but I don't like the crumb, the taste or the gaseous side effects, so I stuck with buckwheat flour for the sugar cookies.

Occupied Territory

Humor provided by the 1%.


I had a downer of a morning. You know when you're in an environment where every single person is treated like a moron by staff who see themselves as superior beings on a more evolved plane? Yeah that. Oh well, bad experiences make good stories and by god I'll be writing about that one. I decided to cheer myself up by heading to the VAG and checking out the food truck action.

Well, the lineups were insane. People were lining up to take photos of lineups. Stuff sold out. I went around the corner to Ensemble Tap for my lunch.

There's a three course deal on right now and I started with the popcorn shrimp with tempura sea asparagus and spicy mayo which cheered me up immediately. Flavors were bright and layered. It hip checked other popcorn shrimp I've had and put them out of the game. (Wow, I sound like such a dude!)

Oh, look at those plump, juicy bangers. I love mushrooms and spaetzle but the sauce was wrong. The mushroom onion pan gravy tasted like honey mustard. I craved vinegar notes and wanted to axe the honey. Is it made sweet to go with the bitterness of beer? Big portion, maybe enough for half the Sedin twins, or half of half of them. I liked the onion slaw--good crispy vinegar tang.

Lovely little key lime pie. Tangy and creamy with a buttery crust. I would have liked a lime curd swoop instead of cream, but then you'd have to charge me more, wouldn't you?

Still feeling a bit out of sorts I headed to the Juice truck for the Beta 5 hot chocolate almond milk with chai marshmallows for (choke) $5.50. It occupied my belly, but not my heart. Go to French Made and have the Earl Grey Chocolate instead or go to La Nouvelle France where she knows her drinking chocolate. It is more "evolved" as they say at Mink. Pretentious? Moi?

Winter Kimchi: Gimjang

Now that I am addicted to Korean tacos, I felt it was time to learn how to make kimchi. I have had lessons in making saurkraut, so I felt I had a little bit of experience in fermenting cabbage. I turned to David Lebovitz because he is my go-to-guy for recipes these days. His recipe made it seem possible to make kimchi without too much sturm und drang.

I enlisted my friend Catherine to help with moral support and hard labor--ie chopping all those ingredients. I gathered as many ingredients as I could find, heading all the way to South Seas in Granville Island to pick up the Korean chili flakes. (Apparently it does not include the seeds of the chilis.) I found just about everything except the daikon, which is always everywhere you look in Vancouver when you're not looking for it.

I prepared the Chinese cabbage ahead of time. Now that was my biggest stumbling block. David says to remove the tough bits of stalk. Ummm how much do you remove? I removed almost all of it and was left with a tiny bag of leafy bits. This was obviously wrong, so we added most of the stalk. Now I have been looking at kimchi making vids online and those cabbage vary greatly in size. I think I'd picked one that must have been about half the size of David's. Anyway we decided to wing it, adding in some Easter egg radishes instead of daikon and hand chopping the ginger and garlic instead of putting it in the food processor. I didn't leave the leaves of the cabbage whole, btw. I wanted it in bite size pieces to put on tacos.

We drank strong tea, chatted about dogs, the universe and everything and we chopped cabbage, onions, garlic, and ginger. Here it is, all mixed up with the fish sauce, honey, and chili flakes. Catherine tasted it and declared it addictive. She said I needed to take it home to ferment or else she'd eat all of it. We got excited about the variations we could make in the future.

Here us our jar of kimchee which it is supposed to ferment outside the fridge until it starts to fizz or bubble. Then you can keep it for about three weeks in the refrigerator where it will gradually get stronger in flavor. So I looked kimchi up on the Wikipedia and of course it has a long and venerable history and back in Korea people make different kinds of pickles depending on the season. Winter kimchi is made though a process called Gimjang. Koreans even take kimchi holidays to get together and make the stuff and they store it in dedicated fridges to keep it at the optimum temperature and also because the smell can leach into other foods.

The new kimchi, made with fish sauce and less salt is healthier than the really traditional stuff, in fact it is considered by many to be one of the healthiest foods in the world. I'm really looking forward to those kimchi tacos and to learning more about this super food.

Hops, Quince and Cranberries

This month I worked with some Langara students at the Moberly Community Herb Garden making herbal wreaths. I pulled down our hops vines to use to make the wreaths and harvested the buds. The hops filled the room we were working in with that pungeant garlic-like smell that is supposed to make you feel drowsy. I've given the hops to a friend who makes beer and he's popped them in the freezer.

I bought these cranberries from a farmer at the Kits market and made a salsa with garlic, honey, and tomatilloes--good with roast chicken.

I also bought tiny crab apples which I made into juice and added some sour cherry juice from fruit I had in the freezer from earlier in the year. I thought I'd have to add honey, but you know I loved it without any sweetener. There was enough residual sugar in the fruit to make it taste tart and refreshing. We've also been making pumpkin pies, which is one of my all time favorite fall foods.

Growing Home

I've been telling everyone I know about this fabulous new grocery store in our neighborhood at Columbia and 18th. It's called The Home Grow-in Grocer. (No, that is not a typo btw.)

It's a little corner store that has had a few previous incarnations, such as a gallery and a yoga studio. What piqued my interest was an e-mail that let me know I could buy UBC Farm produce at this grocer. Well, I hopped on my bike and checked it out. Now I buy produce there as well as milk and gifts for my friends. Besides food products the owner sells locally made gifts such as cloth bags and soap with as much money as possible going right into the maker's pocket.

They also sell ice cream and the mango flavour is totally addictive. Last night it seemed every family I met on the way to the store was carrying a cup or cone of ice cream from the shop.

I mean look at this lovely garlic. What's not to like?

I heard a rumor that the owner might have a café here in the winter time. I hope it's true!

I will ask about their hours and post them here, but I think they're open until 8 pm most evenings. We are so lucky to have this place in our neighborhood. I wish them all the best.