Long Walks, Long Links, Long Weekend, Part 2

Saturday morning started out at 7:30am, when we woke to walk to the ferry dock, arms full of groceries we bought for a ship full of kids aged 13 to 16 (and a few adults too).

Our friend Stephen (you've heard of him before - he was the professor we taught with this past spring) is volunteering on the Pacific Grace, a tallship owned and operated by the Sail and Life Training Society (SALTS). He has worked with them for years, and asked us to help him gather supplies for a delightful* paella. (Stephen's very charming use of "delightful" never fails to make me smile.)

We were lucky enough to join the crew and the students aboard for breakfast, and a quick sail around Burrard Inlet. This is their first trip of the summer, and we feel very lucky to have joined them, even if it was just for a few short hours.

When we got home, we made a nice Spanish chorizo, and had a lot of time to hang out, listen to music, drink rum punch, and cook. It was a lovely afternoon, and turned into a very relaxing evening.

Yesterday after church we came home and got ready for the week, making date bars, doing laundry, cleaning up the apartment, getting packages ready for sending (!), etc....

I made some shortcakes for a sweet 4th of July barbeque with our good friends Sarah, Joy & Ted, and served them along with mixed berries (of the straw-, blue-, and black- varieties) with mint, rum, and just a touch of sugar. Delicious. It was a wonderful wrap-up to a wonderful weekend.

Yup - it is official - I am a lucky, LUCKY girl.

I hope you a great one too!

Long Walks, Long Links, Long Weekend, Part 1

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.....

Long weekends make it all worth it.

Thursday July 1st was Canada Day, and because we are living in Canada now, we took advantage of the day off! Seb and I also took Friday off, to make the weekend especially luxurious!

We were busy little bees this weekend, but in the best way possible. It wasn't that we had much planned; we didn't. It was busy in the way summer days should be.

For Canada Day, we took a long walk around town, to stretch our legs a bit. We walked just a touch over 8 miles, and ended our walk at the Yaletown Grand Prix, to cheer on our friend Ted and his cycling team. We went home for a while, and left soon after because Sebastien represented Acadamie Duello in the Canada Day Parade (along with 53 other swordspeople)! After that we were thoroughly exhausted.

Friday we did another long walk (this one 12 - 1/2 miles), picking up groceries and lunch along the way, and chatting about all the different neighborhoods we passed through.

After our lovely walk and delicious lunch (near mile marker 6), we made sure to take off our hiking boots (!). We headed off to watch our friend Anil's passion project for the last year - a documentary series pilot (the two episodes we watched were about Jodhpur, India). It is splendid. I can't wait for it to get picked up by Discovery or TLC (any of you out there reading this work for Discover or TLC?)!

It was a relaxing couple of days, even more so because we would normally have been at work!

You Can't Catch Me; I'm the Gingerbread (wo)Man!

Every year for Valentine's Day, I make Sebastien some gingerbread cookies. Don't ask me why....

What I do know is that the first time I made them for him, he literally ate so many he got sick. So I took that as a compliment and have been making them since. This past weekend (I guess in honor of summer?), I made them again. They aren't very summery, but they are tasty, and there were no complaints.


(Extra) Ginger Gingerbread Cookies (adapted from allrecipes.com)

1c. white sugar
2 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. ground nutmeg (I use fresh, and it is really nice, but you can use the jar too)
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt (I use kosher, because I like getting bites with more "bite," you know?)
1-1/2 tsp. baking soda

1c. melted butter
1/2c. evaporated milk
1/2c. maple syrup
1/2c. unsulfered molasses
3/4 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 tsp. lemon extract

4c. all-purpose flour

1/4c. chopped dried candied ginger (this is the secret!)

1. Preheat oven to 350'F and grease cookie sheet

2. Find some cute cookie-cutters that you have tucked away (this time I wanted a summery theme, so I made bees, hearts, and starfish). Set them aside

3. Mix the first 6 ingredients (all dry ingredients except flour and chopped candied ginger)

4. Mix in the next 6 (wet)

5. Stir in the flour. If it is still sticky (mine usually is), add 1/2 to 1c. more. Add chopped candied ginger.

6. Roll to 1/2" thick.

7. Cut and place on baking sheet.

8. Bake at 350' for 9-11 minutes.

The frosting, I am almost embarrassed to put online. I feel like I need to justify it. It does have corn syrup in it, and I adamantly avoid it when I can. It is unfortunately very bad for you, and even more, it is in virtually all prepared foods at the supermarket. So, I think I may have put on sunglasses when I actually bought a container at the store. BUT, I am very careful about my corn syrup intake, and I seldom make these cookies, and it makes the frosting SO lovely and shiny, like a nice glaze. *If any of you know of an alternative to using it that will still result in shiny little cookie gems, please let me know.* So - ahem - here without further ado:

Lovely Glazed Icing

1c. confectioners sugar

2 tsp. milk

2 tsp. light corn syrup

1/4 tsp. lemon extract

whatever food coloring you would like (this time I opted for white)

some lemon zest, if you have it on hand

1. Mix sugar and milk.

2. Add everything else.

3. Dip cookies in, or I like to paint it on with a kitchen brush.

4. Enjoy!

Holy Meatwad, Batman OR Very Busy Weekends

Disclaimer:
If you are vegetarian, you may want to wait until my next post to read my blog.

If you aren't vegetarian, I will share with you a few facts, and a conclusion.

1. It would be an gross understatement to say that I like sausage. I adore it, really. That also sounds a little gross to me, but so be it. It is out in the open now: I LOVE (definitely in caps) sausage.

However, there is a bit of a rub. I don't like to buy it in the store, because I have no clue what the $*@% is in the stuff you buy there. Use your imaginations, folks. Whatever gross thing you are picturing in your head is probably in most of the sausage at the store. Sorry - it is true. I would be a total liar if I said I don't eat the stuff though every once in a while. I do. (In fact, one of my favorite food venders here in Vancouver is called Japadog, and though I don't go there often, I do go there.)

2. Sebastien and I love to travel, and we love to cook, and we love trying new recipes. When we were in South Africa, we got really excited about boerwors, literally "farmer's sausage," that was served at every braii (barbeque) we attended. We had a really hard time locating some when we arrived in Vancouver from Cape Town, so we thought, "Hmmmn.... Maybe we could get our butcher to make this for us! We'll just give him the recipe." Then our thoughts changed to, "Why don't we just do it ourselves?"

3. For Christmas, Sebastien's sister gave him a sausage attachment to use on our Kitchen Aide (thanks, V!), so now there were no excuses.

In CONCLUSION, we are now sausage-makers. (The strange part about all this is that I don't think we cook meat more than once every two weeks, if that.)

We've done about 4 batches so far, and each one has been totally different from the rest.

We made a classic Italian sausage first (because it was pretty basic), and then moved on to boerwors (free range organic pork & beef, a little bacon, coriander, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, garlic, and some chilis), then did a merguez, and the most recent one we made was pork with apples and leeks. All have been delicious, and all of them I can stand behind.

What has caught me by surprise is how excited people got when I told them what we were doing! So many co-workers were interested in getting some, and so now we are having a hard time keeping up with the demand! That isn't a bad thing at all. It seems like other people were also looking for quality sausages!

Because we've been making so much, this is an (almost) all-day process. We purchase the meat and other ingredients from the best suppliers we can think of (without a car, which makes bringing home 12-15lbs of meat home more interesting), and then prep the ingredients, chopping and grating (in the case of the boerwors, we had to grate a few tablespoons of nutmeg - you could totally taste the difference).

First we partially freeze the meat, to make it easier to cut into cubes and then grind. Then we season it all (which uses every large bowl we have, to make sure the seasoning is dispersed evenly). We put the ground, seasoned meat back through the stuffer, and load the casings onto the "nose," being careful not to tear it. After the casings have been filled, we make links and then dry them, in the refrigerator. The following morning is when we are able to cut them apart and bag them for our friends!

Here are some photos of the process (these are from the italian sausages):

Some ingredients - garlic, fennel, parsley, chili flakes, and casings.


Sebastien looking very intent on grinding the meat - this takes a couple of hours usually


Cutting apart the links - after putting the seasoned meat into the casings


The finished products

We've been making one batch per month so far, giving most of it away (well, not giving it away, but...). I am sure we will keep it up, experimenting with different recipes and ingredients. If you have any recipes you've tried, let me know!