Meandering Musings

Baking

After weeks of taste testing and practice batches I've narrowed down my selections for this years Christmas Cookies.  I spent the better part of the weekend in the kitchen.

Here is a sneak peek:

Sports

I watched Federer play Davydenko Saturday morning.  I don't know terminology that used in tennis.   I have just figured out that a set is called a set and is not called a period or an inning.  And what is the love about??

My dad would wear his Riders jersey to church on the Sundays that the Riders were playing a game.  And so, in memory of my dad I wore my 2007 Grey Cup Championship T-shirt while I did my baking on Sunday.  It's probably the closest I'll ever become to being a fan of football.

I guess it was a pretty disappointing weekend if you are a fan of Federer or the Riders.  Lucky for me my ignorance is my bliss. 

Horoscope

I don't really look at my horoscope, but my coworker read mine to me today and I thought it was fitting:

Gemini: Making lemonade from lemons is too passe for you. You'll turn your lemons into something more exciting -- a flaming sorbet or a fancy pie. With a twist and a flourish, you create magic and entertainment.

Christmas

Mandatory gift giving and rampant commercialization makes me want to not give gifts this year.  Can't I just bake and cook for everyone?

~b~

You Capture - Food

I'm liking this weeks photo challenge at I Should Be Folding Laundry because it's about FOOD. Since I started this blog back in March and bought my Nikon I have noticed that I have been taking an awful lot of pictures of food.

Pictures of food in restaurants, like when I went Keo's and The Granary. I've blogged about Belgium Cookies, and a Unfortunate Incident at Original Joe's that involved a succulent snow pea. And I started to do silly things like run outside with the Blackened Chicken to catch the fading light of the day.

Sometimes when I take a picture, it turns out to look rather unappetizing, like this Dahl I made on Sunday night. Despite its appearance, it was deLish.

On Monday I made Dutch Macaroni and decided then and there that every plate I served from then on would not only taste good, but would look good as well.

. . .

And then Tuesday came. It was late, and I was hungry. My Spanish Omelet on Homemade Hash Browns turned into Scrambled Eggs with Onions, Red Pepper and Bacon.

A week and a half ago I sat down and planned my meals for the next two weeks. It's something I have never done before and I am proud to say that I have pretty much stuck to schedule. Except for Wednesday when I got up to make the Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup (I forgot about the whole "roasting of the red peppers"). I don't even want to tell you what I ended making Wednesday night. And it's my blog, so I won't.

And tonight, I tried something new. That's why I love cooking so much. It never gets boring because there is always some new recipe to try . . . or you can always line up your vegetables in the casserole dish with a little flair.

Tonight I made Roasted Garlic and Herb Tilapia with Oven Roasted Potatoes and Carrots. This has been my favorite meal this week.

Check out more You Capture HERE.

~b~

One Month

The one month countdown begins and tomorrow marks the day that we (and when I write we, I mean me) decided at work that it would be okay to start playing Christmas music. I know, it feels a little early with the warm weather and lack of snow. But, I've already marked the day on the calendar, complete with artistic touches of a christmas tree that's decked out with lights and presents. I've even embellished the whole scene with a huge musical note to denote the "playing of the Christmas music".

So we're kicking off the holiday spirit tomorrow with albums like: Bare Naked for the Holidays (Bare Naked Ladies), Christmas Songs (Diana Krall), The Family Force 5 Christmas Pageant, and of course the classic: Christmas with Boney M.

~b~

Bantam Hockey

Tonight I was a hockey step mom and got to take a friends son to his first game of a hockey tournament.

It was a very good game. The other team scored a goal and tied the game, 3-3 at the end of the last period. Apparently that means overtime when it is a tournament.

I'm not too sure of the whole cheering thing yet. I managed to sit at the wrong side of the bleachers with the other team. Basically my cheers are uttered under my breath and consist of:

• Oh (when I was slightly excited) and

• Oooh (when I was very excited) and also,

• C'mon C'mon (when we were trying to score at the net), and

• General nervous leg shaking (it was a close game in the last period) . . . although the leg shaking could have been entirely due to the Grande Gingerbread Americano Misto I consumed during the game.

My general thoughts of the Bantam hockey game are:

• I'm not liking the checking. Those guys can hit pretty hard, and the boards sound so loud when they get checked.

• Oh and they stink. As the teams filed passed us to play the last period, I almost passed out!

• My attention span has now increased to minutes. Imagine that! I can't believe I would actually like watching hockey.

• I was very impressed when #7 tried to stop a player by throwing his body at the other team players legs. Oh the danger! What dedication! The ref, however, was not impressed. I guess it's called tripping and it's a 2 minute penalty.

• I've come a long way from the days of "puck drop" (and looking for cupcake mix too!)

I had a great time at the rink tonight and am looking forward to watching more games this weekend.

~b~

Mr. Weasel

Earlier this week I spotted this little guy in a field at the dog park. His very white coat caught my attention as his long slender body glided smoothly over the lumpy ground of the farmers field.

When I spotted him, sticking out like a sore thumb, I felt like a kid as I chased after him to try and get a picture.

He ended up on the side of a hill and I spent forever slowly stalking towards him, trying to get as close as possible.

This is Max. I ordered him to "Sit" and "Stay". He sat there for a least 10 minutes, nonchalantly looking around and casually gazing skyward as the geese flew by overhead. I was VERY impressed with him and the fact that he did not try and eat my "subject".

I just love his cute little pink nose and his tiny round ears. And I kinda wish it would snow so the poor little fellow can blend a bit.

~b~

Making Alioli Sauce Frightens Me

I'm sitting here trying to work up the courage to make the Alioli Sauce for one of the appetizers I'm making. I'm having company over tomorrow night and I've made some big promises of yummy appetizers. One of them being the Bread with Mushrooms and Alioli Sauce that I had at my cooking class at Wild Serendipity Foods.

I've never made a mayonnaise before, and not too sure if I can, so instead, let me tell you about the new recipe I tried over the weekend. It's called Peppery Chicken Curry and can be found here at Kayotic Kitchen. The recipe was so easy and so delicious. You just mix a few things together, let marinade and then puree a bunch of onions, add spices and chicken and let simmer.

I was expecting the chicken to be quite hot and spicy and was slighty disappointed that it wasn't. But with each bite I could taste the wonderful peppery flavor, and I think any spiciness would have taken away from the flavour.

And so, my review of this recipe is: I love pepper and I love this recipe, its definitely a keeper.

This photo just doesn't do the recipe justice. It is very hard to capture pure deliciousness when it is 8 o'clock at night, your hungry, and you have to take a picture under crappy incandescent lights.

But, on the positive side, my son also loved this recipe. It makes me happy when I find a recipe he enjoys eating, especially when it's an ethnic recipe. I must have done something right.

. . . .

Back to the Alioli Sauce, or maybe bed.

~b~

iPhone Photos

Lens is the NY Times photojournalism blog and it's one of the sites I go to and look at photographs. A while ago they posted reader's photos taken only with a camera phone.

I thought I'd spend the weekend using my iPhone to take pictures. The pictures I have posted have all been taken with my iPhone 3G S and have been processed with Camera Bag. Camera Bag is probably my favorite app.

Here are my photos:

(filtered with Helga: washed out highlights and old-school vinetting)

I took this picture on Friday, coming back to work from lunch. I think I'll call it "The Wedding Party".

(Nothing, I just liked the texture)

I have no idea what filter I used. I didn't even take the picture. I just wanted to show you my new boyfriend. I met him at Old Navy in the Men's section. He's just what I've been looking for: he's nice and quiet, and he listens to me.

(Colorcross- hazy, chemical color swapping straight from the darkroom)

I took this picture when I went to warm up my car Saturday morning. It was inspired by a picture I saw on the Lens blog.

(Lolo-vibrant and colorful)

This in Nemo. I actually took this picture last weekend. But he's so cute, I had to include him. Plus, he looks fantastic with the Lolo filter applied.

(Cinema-dramatic moody coloring with a widescreen aspect ratio . . . because cheese looks so much better on the big screen)

Taken at Bulk Cheese. Because . . . well . . . I like cheese.

(Fisheye- to highlight the mostrosity growing in the vegetable isle)

The other day I cut open a green pepper and found a mini green pepper actually growing inside. I was disturbed. And then, I found this at Sobey's on Saturday. I was disgusted. It's like Alien, except instead of an Alien popping out of the chest of a human, it's a green pepper popping out of the top of a green pepper.

(Colorcross, again. Because Colorcross is cool. Breaking your Mac - not so much.)

This is a sad story involving a boy and a laptop and a dog named Max. The laptop lost. I'm glad it wasn't mine. The end.

~b~

Good Memory . . .

This is one of my favorite pictures. For some reason, I had been thinking of this photograph and was starting to worry that I had lost it. But I found it last friday at work while I was searching for something else.

This photo was taken when my son was about 8. I can't believe how short his hair was back then! I had just bought my Volkswagon Jetta and needed to get away, so I took 5 weeks off of work, packed the car and headed off to the West Coast.

We headed to Vancouver Island, first stopping at Quailicum Beach where we flew a big black shark kite on the windy shores and spelunked the clautrophobic caverns of Horne Lake Caves.

Then it was off down the winding highway to Ucluelet. The fog from the ocean made everything damp and I remember shivering in the tent at night. It was here, at Ucluelet where the picture was taken, when we took a whale watching excursion and rode the open sea on a wild Zodiac.

My favorite part was camping at Long Beach which is part of Pacific Rim National Park. Everyday we would walk the path from our campsite to the beach and spend our time walking in the surf, finding driftwood and climbing the rocks which jutted out of the sand. We discovered slugs of monstrous proportions and at night I would fall asleep to the roar of the ocean waves, in the distance.

After the Island, we returned to Vancouver (because I just couldn't get enough of that city), and then I reluctantly started the trip back to Saskatoon. The trip lasted 21 days, and was one of my favorites. It was the first time I had driven through the mountains, and the first and second time I went to Vancouver.

~b~

Okay, I've Changed My Mind . . .

A while back when the cold hit, I went about muttering, I hate winter to pretty much anyone who would listen to me. And I vowed to myself that this would be the very last winter I would spent in this horridly cold city.

I thought that the security of my job was holding me here, so I came up with a few alternatives that would allow me to keep my job, and yet avoid the cold.

This is what I came up with:

• Mass Migration. The birds do it, so why can't we? I'm up for jumping into my car and driving down to Mexico every fall and returning in the spring. Once we get the oil companies to realize they can make a fortune by jacking up the prices during Migration time, I'm sure the government will be soon to agree.

• Hibernation. I most definitely don't get enough sleep and when I really don't get enough sleep, I'm slightly wonky. This would be the perfect solution to my lack of sleep problem.

• -Public Servant Exchange Program, or PSEP because we're all about acronyms in the government. Surely there's some idiot we could dupe into spending the winter here. We could turn it into some kind of Survivor series: Come and experience wonders of snow. Battle the daily onslaught of frost on your windows. See the wee electric blankets we use to keep our car batteries from freezing and take care not to inhale too deeply through your noses, lest your nostrils stick together, permanently.

. . . . . . .

My friend kidnapped me on Saturday. And I am only forgiving her because she introduced me to the wonders of Dim Sum.

Ang: Thank you for showing me what Dim Sum is (which I thought was a noodle dish, like the Phad Tai I had at Keo's). And thank you for introducing me to Crab Rangoon (my life is now more or less complete) and thank you for letting me eat Coconut Buns, its been a while since I first had them at Folkfest in the Bowl.

So, not only did I spend a Saturday in the company of good friends, but the weather this weekend was absolutely beautiful.

Sights like this tend make me forget the harshness of winter.

I think I was a tad bit hasty in the last winter I'll ever live here rant. It's not so bad and it's not really the job that's keeping me here. It's the friends, and the family and the possibilities. So I think I'll sit tight and wait and see what the winter has in store for me.

~b~

Tapas!

I spent Wednesday night at a cooking class at Wild Serendipity Foods.

The class was called Tantalizing Tapas and the menu consisted of: Chicken and Chorizo Empanadas, Bread with Mushrooms and Alioli, Patatas Bravas, Pan-Roasted Shrimp with Garlic and Sangria.

The classes are taught by owner, Michelle Zimmer (check out her blog).

Michelle demonstrated a few things, like making the elusive pastry (which I can never manage to get right) and the Alioli sauce. We were quickly set loose in the very large commercial kitchen to work on our assigned tasks:

This is the Chicken and Chorizo mixture that will be used in the Empanadas.

We used Yukon Gold Potatoes for the Patatas Bravas (which is just a fancy title for: crispy potatoes in tomato sauce). The potatoes coming out of the oven were such a beautiful golden color.

This is the Tomato Sauce that will be poured onto the potatoes:

Check out those diced onions (diced by yours truly) (also stirred with love by yours truly)

Michelle is demonstrating how to make our empanadas.

The making of the Alioli Sauce which did not "break". Michelle is such a pro in the kitchen.

Mixing up Sangria.

The Emapanadas, ready for the oven.

The best part of the evening was sitting down and eating.

The Pan-Roasted Shrimp with Garlic and the Patatas Bravas. Simply delicious.

Bread with Mushroom and Alioli. This was my very favorite. I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful this was. Lets just say that I had seconds, and I don't even like mushrooms.

The cooking class was very hands-on and a whole lot of fun. I had such a great night and met some very fun and nice people. I can't wait to sign up for some more classes.

~b~

Sugar Cookies

One of the first things I ever learnt to bake were these sugar cookies. I had my own little apron and small roller and would love cutting out the shapes with the cookie cutter.

And the recipe is so easy and tasty and it is, in fact, the very first recipe I put in my own recipe book.

Here's the recipe:

Becky's Signature Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp vanilla

5-6 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and milk and all that other stuff. Mix away and add the flour. Bake at 375 F for 12ish or so minutes.

I usually sprinkle with decorative sugar before I pop the cookies into the oven, but I used some coarser sugar I got from my sugar dealer, so with the ghosts, I added the sugar after they came out of the oven.

And now a little chemistry:

Cream of tartar is really potassium hydrogen tartrate (KC4H5O6) and is used to help activate the baking soda. The baking soda is added to raise the pH of the cookie dough which then weakens the gluten and the egg protein structure. This makes the cookie spread more and is crispier and browner.

Sorry for delving into the depths of chemistry, even if none of that makes any sense, this recipe is fun and easy and makes a very tasty cookie.

~b~

I May Be a Little Weird . . .

but I've always been slightly jealous of a man's facial hair. Dont' get me wrong, I definitely do not want facial hair of my own, what so ever. It's just that there are so many different styles, so many options, so many ways to express yourself.

Handlebars:

Pai Mei from Kill Bill is sporting some pretty fancy eyebrows:

One year at University it seemed everybody was growing beards. We would sit in class and wonder whether the prof would start to have birds start to fly out of his beard.

His grad student had a beard that had its very own shadow and was working towards getting its own postal code:

(Identity has been hidden to protect the innocent)

I'm sure if they would have kept up with it, they would have ended up like Hagrid:

~b~

Irrationality

This whole H1N1 thing has gone overboard. And I just want to stick my fingers in my ears and yell out LA LA LA LA when I hear people talking about it.

I'm sick of the media hype and the constant inundation of messages. It seems that only way capture our attention and sell stories, can only be done through the use of fear and the sensationalization of horrific events which often happen to only a small portion of the population. And then we spend our time talking about the latest catastrophe and all its horrific aspects, and what a terrible state our world is in. Because it's a lot easier to regurgitate the latest story we have "heard", by which, we are merely turning this horrific news story into a form of entertainment. Because talking about it is much more interesting than doing anything about it, or questioning it, or finding out more answers.

Rationally, I know that there is a lot of overexposure and hype from the media and that everything needs to be put into perspective. However, sometime this past week I seemed to have lost any perspective I may have held, along with any kind of rationality I may have had. And it was all because I overhead a story in which a 13 year old boy was taken into the Mediclinic by his mother on a Saturday, send home, and then died on Sunday. At which point I realized that my son is 12 and he is my world.

It was then that my perspective fell away, my cursed imagination ran wild and I became an irrational person for the past week. It didn't help that my coworkers were away sick (all for innocuous reasons, like a headache, and pink eye) and I was all alone with no one around to help me to come back to reason.

And so this week I had done the following, very irrational things:

• I self isolated myself and stayed in my lab all day. I stopped going to the lunchroom and instead left the building for lunch and coffee.

• I loudly stated my opinion that it wasn't fair to us healthy people (who have to go to work if we aren't sick) when sick people show up, coughing and sneezing - because we get sick leave and get paid to stay at home when we are sick.

• I repeatedly asked my son how he was feeling and quizzed him on the status of his classmates health and considered keeping him home from school when the absentee rate hit 10%

• I kept phoning my mother to find out how she was feeling and when she didn't answer the phone, I drove all the way over to her house to check up on her.

• I started to fret over the possibility of losing the people that I love which is not a good thing when you have a very active imagination.

When I was in high school my friends and I used to spend a lot of time picking each other up and driving around the city. One night my friends boyfriend was driving and I just couldn't get over this nagging premonition that something was going to happen. Every turn that he made made me more and more anxious. By the end of the night I just wanted him to skid out of control and drive off the road, because this feeling was getting so strong that I could barely take it anymore. Well, as he was driving to my place to drop me off, he decided to take off after this car. He made a quick right turn and hit some slick ice. The car ended up sliding across the road, up over the sidewalk, where we finally stopped when we hit a snowbank. We were only shook up and needed to only hop out of the car, push it out of the snowbank before we were back on the road.

And that's how I feel with this whole H1N1. The whole build up that my son would get sick was much worse than him being sick. And he did get sick this weekend, with the common flu. And I will love him and take care of him until he gets better. And yes, he will get sick again. And he could get H1N1. But life is what it is, and I will not let fear dominate my mind or my actions anymore.

~b~