GrongarBlog – Page 23

52 Photos ~ My reflection

As I mentioned before, these weekly photo themes often put a song in my head. This week’s song is Reflections, a Burt Bacharach song from the 1973 movie Lost Horizon, which I’ve never seen. That movie was a remake of Frank Capra’s 1937 film of the same name, also which I’ve never seen. Both movies were based on a novel by James Hilton. Which I’ve never read.

But I know the song. Note for note. Word for word. And this is because I heard it about five million times (I’m exaggerating only slightly) when I was about 10 or 11 years old.

And this is because my parents chose to use the song as background music for a slide show they were producing for a client. Some of you may remember the days before desktop computers, before pocket video cameras, before Powerpoint. Back then, if you wanted to make a presentation to share with your company or clients, you could make flip charts on paper, or draw on a black board (white boards also didn’t exist). If you had a bigger budget, you could hire someone to make a film that you would display with a whirring film projector on a pull-down or pop-up screen in the conference room.

Or, you could take photographs of your subject matter, develop them on slide film, arrange the slides in a carousel slide projector, record a narrator on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, record background music on another track of the same tape, and then synchronize the narration/music sound track with the slides.

The entire process is a lot of work. It takes awhile, and it’s quite manual. As kids, my sister and I didn’t see a lot of the work that went into these slide shows (and there were many), but the one part we were submerged in was that final sequencing/synchronizing where my parents would spend hours and hours every evening making sure the slides were in the right order and that the next slide was shown at exactly the right pause in the narration and the right beat in the music.

Tape player on. Click. Advance slide. Click. Advance slide. Click. Stop recorder. Rewind. Play. Click. Click. Stop. Rewind. Play. Click. Click. Click. Click. Stop. Rewind. Play.

A painstaking process. Whereby you learn every. single. note.

Which reminds me of the hours that we would spend trying to figure out the lyrics of a song by playing a tiny portion of the song on the record player, lifting the needle, writing the lyrics we thought we heard down, starting the song from the beginning to verify what we heard, then moving on to the next line and the next.

Hours spent with our heads down, as close to the speakers as possible, grateful for clear enunciators, cursing Elton John for his slurry diction.

All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with the photograph at the top of this post.

Unless you take it as a metaphor: standing on a present-day city street, wrapped in a puffy winter coat, nose pressed against the shopfront window, the contrast of inside and outside, past and present, and the layers of reflection that dance between them.

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This photo and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.

52 Photos ~ Wide open spaces

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

–Wallace Stevens

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The toast truck will serve soft-ripened goat cheese

This month’s Let’s Lunch theme is Kummerspeck, a German word that means “grief bacon,” the extra layer of fat one accrues from emotional overeating. This is a condition I’m familiar with, particularly this time of year.

If I’m completely honest, in times of deep trouble, what I often crave most is a bag of potato chips (or crisps, if you’re reading from the other side of the pond). And possibly a tub of french onion dip. Of my own.

But this wouldn’t be much of a post if I wrote, “Go to the store, grab a bag of chips, there you go.” And, yes, I could have gone to the lengths of making my own hand-cut chips (and dip from fresh herbs and homemade sour cream), but that’s pure silliness. When I’m in desperate need of comfort, the last thing I should be doing is getting anywhere near the mandoline blade or a pot of boiling oil.

So what I’ll write about here instead is toast. Because toast can be as simple or complex as you’d like. Because you can make it without risking much harm to life and limb. And because it has the essential components that make it an ideal comfort food: simplicity, speed, crunch, starch, warmth, flexibility, portability.

Toast is a palette, a platform, an edible Zelig that can take the form you need for the moment.

No matter how miserable you feel, within a span of ten minutes, you can make two slices of toast and be back on the sofa, nibbling at the crunchy corners, licking the sweet butter and jam from your fingers, and watching a favorite black-and-white movie.

Toast requires no ceremony, no special implements or equipment (though a toaster does make the process simpler), and no special skill.

You can make it fancy if you want. You can make it in the Catalan style, grilled, then rubbed with garlic and tomato, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt. Or, similarly, as the Italians do, topped with crushed tomatoes, basil, and olive oil, calling it bruschetta.

Or buy a loaf of sliced white bread on your way home from work, and eat a toasted peanut butter sandwich while you stand at the kitchen counter sorting the stack of bills and junk mail.

Or, early in the morning, spread a slice of bread with butter, sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar, put it under the broiler until it browns and turns sugary spicy, then go out onto the porch and watch the dawn rise.

You can carry single-serving packets of Nutella in your backpack on a mountain trail, then stop by a waterfall to spread the hazelnut-chocolate on packaged “toasts” while you scrutinize the map.

You can go to a June field, harvest organic strawberries, cook them down into a bubbling jam, and can them for the toast of future winters.

Or chop clementines into bits, mix with the juice of more clementines, honey, a vanilla bean and some whole cloves, and simmer it down into quick winter marmalade that will refresh a someday sultry summer day.

You can cook bacon with onions, garlic, coffee, vinegar, brown sugar and maple syrup until you can’t ignore the savory waft coming from your stove, pulse it down into a paste, and call it “bacon jam.” And if you have any left over, you can spread it on crusty bread, top it with goat-milk ricotta cheese, and broil it until it’s irresistibly crunchy and brown.

You can bake your own artisanal loaf of bread, or bring one home from the farmers’ market, or the corner store. You can churn your own butter from the creamy top of the quart you milked from your cow this morning, or you can unwrap an unsalted stick you bought at the grocery store last week.

It doesn’t matter, because all toast, in whatever guise, is your friend, a momentary refuge from everything that is difficult and complicated and prissy.

Can I tell you one more toast thing? About my fantasy of owning a little “toast truck”? I’d drive it around town, like the ice cream truck, only I’d serve freshly toasted slices of bread I’d baked the day before, topped with jams or cheeses or spreads that I’d cooked up in the evenings.

And you’d be there on the curb in the morning with your mug of coffee, steam swirling up to your nose, and I’d hand you the slices you’d chosen, and we’d be laughing over some joke you’d made, and you’d brush the crumbs from your mouth with the back of your hand as we talked, and, right there, together we could see the whole beautiful, buttery day in front of us.

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Not comforted yet? You should go see what the rest of the Let’s Lunch group craves in their moment of need…

Caramel, Chocolate and Salted Peanut Ice Cream from Lisa at Monday Morning Cooking Club
Pot Stickers from Tammi at Insatiable Munchies
Sabaw ng Monggo: Mung Bean Soup with Bacon from Betty Ann at Asian in America
Dark Chocolate Vanilla Pomegranate Parfait from Linda at Spicebox Travels
Slap Yo’ Mama Brownies from Lucy at In a Southern Kitchen
“Hug-in-a-bowl” noodles from Vivian at Vivian Pei
Evil Grief Brownies from Annabelle at Glass of Fancy
Chicken Noodle Soup from Margaret at Tea and Scones
German pancakes from Cheryl at A Tiger in the Kitchen
Beef Bourguinon with kartoffelkloesse AND maple candied bacon from Karen at GeoFooding
Cold fried chicken and potato salad from Lucy at A Cook and Her Books

Toast recipes

I know you don’t need me to tell you how to make toast, so I’ll just share a few links to toast-related recipes I like. If you have a favorite toast recipe, I’d love to know about it!

Toastable breads
Julia Child’s white toasting bread
Peter Reinhart’s Multigrain Extraordinaire
My favorite Challah

Jams, jellies and spreads
Bacon jam
Cajeta (goat-milk caramel)
Brown sugar clementine marmalade
Crabapple jelly
Chocolate hazelnut spread
Vanilla-peach jam
Hummus
Pesto
Freudenspeck Beef Bourguinon with Kartoffelkloesse plus maple candied bacon from Karen at GeoFooding

Dairy
Cow milk ricotta
Goat milk ricotta
Cream cheese
Butter, cultured and non-cultured

Toasty recipes
Cinnamon toast with butter and honey
Catalan tomato bread
Bruschetta

52 Photos ~ Something really small

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

–Wallace Stevens

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These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.

52 Photos ~ The first day of 2014

On New Year’s day, we always do a jigsaw puzzle. We never finish it that day, but we start it soon after we wake up (however late that is) and go all day, snacking on New Year’s Eve leftovers as needed, turning on the lights around 4 so we can continue into the evening.

This year’s puzzle was a doozy: the map of downtown Toronto in three levels – the street grid from the lake shore up to Dundas (and all 640ish pieces, devilishly, the same shape and size); a second layer of just the city streets fashioned out of foam pieces with cutouts for buildings; and then a set of 110 plastic models of the skyscrapers and other historic buildings to be inserted into the proper cutouts in the foam, on the streets where they live.

We started it together, but I finished it alone a couple nights later. All except for two buildings, one which was missing (did I place it in the wrong place?) and one extra, that I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where to put…

It’s kind of nice to start the year off with a manageable project. The parameters are defined, and we all (M, H, my sister, and I) get to contribute as we like.

For some reason, I usually end up working the puzzle upside down. In this case, it felt particularly apt, taking the view south, from where my grandparents lived, imagining the car, subway, or bus ride from Bathurst to downtown, the walk to the harbor front, the ferry to Centre Island, the view across the choppy lake from the country where I felt at home to the country where I lived.

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All will be well

I sat down here to write one thing, but I think I’ll write another. Because if I’m boring myself, how must you feel, dear patient readers? Let’s not be bored.

I won’t write about things past, or the cold, or the current worries.

Yawn.

Today I worked, and that’s a wonderful feeling. I had a list of things my client wanted me to do and I sat down and did them and then had a phone meeting where my client and I laughed about some confusing things in the project. And no one was mean. And no one was snarky. And it was all in the name of pleasantly working on a project together.

Today I took hot water mixed with molasses out to the goats and they welcomed me with their very sparkly, inquisitive eyes, and sniffed my pants and nibbled on my jacket’s zipper pull. As usual, they tried to race into the upper part of barn before I could shut them out, but Westie (shy, picked upon Westie) is very fast and very smart and got in there before I could shoo her. So how do I punish her? By letting her stay in, of course, along with her own bucket of hay and her private bucket of molasses “tea.” Because you have to give her credit. That girl knows what she wants.

Today I skipped breakfast because I was in a hurry to get to work, but I made a big mug of English Breakfast tea. And later, when I got hungry, I stood by the open refrigerator and ate the last wedge of kishke that we’d heated up on the weekend.

Today I finished the work that needed doing, and then drove to my favorite flower shop and asked Morgan, the owner, to make me a bouquet that would make me smile. She went around the shop, picking blooms that pleased her, while I stood still by the center table, overflowing with flowers, the air warm and summer-scented.

Today I thought about my mother, and how this day, six years ago, she left us. And I smiled more than I thought I would. I wouldn’t say I was exactly happy, but I felt peaceful. I felt her near me, and I felt her appreciating the flowers. I imagined her easy smile and her infectious laugh and the mischievous spark in her eyes.

Today I didn’t worry about one thing, though the list of potential worries is long. What happened before has happened and can’t be changed. What happens tomorrow is anyone’s guess.

I cannot maintain this zen feeling, but I can enjoy it while it lasts, while the last trace of sunlight slips over the western hills, while the waxing crescent of the moon rides behind wispy clouds, while H hums to herself while she does her French homework, while the dog rests his chin on his paws in front of the fire, while M places the takeout Chinese food order, while my heart beats.

Florentines

True facts about the Florentine…

~ There’s a bakery down the road from here that makes florentines as big as your open hand. No really. If you’re in the neighborhood, you must go get two; one for now and one for later.

~ The genesis of my dream florentine is oranges. Some people make florentines without any candied fruit at all; some people make them with a combination of fruits. But if orange isn’t the predominant flavor, it just doesn’t count as a florentine for me.

~ The florentine name suggests that this cookie is from Italy, specifically Florence. That’s what I thought, anyway. I was wrong. In fact, no one really seems to know where this cookie was invented, though all evidence points to France. If you want to read a little more about the history of the florentine, you should check out this interesting post from Honestcooking.com.

~ H, in utero, was formed from four major food groups: frozen yogurt, fruit salad, bistro ham sandwiches, and florentines. Alas, today, she has lost her taste for all but the first.

~ The recipe for florentines seems long when I write it out, but there are no really finicky steps and it’s easy to break the recipe down into manageable pieces. For instance, when I made them I broke the process into three easy days:

Make the candied orange peels (you can skip this step if you already have the orange peels or are buying them).
Make the syrup, almond, fruit, and flour mixture. Then bake the cookies.
Spread the chocolate.

Making the candied orange peels from scratch is the only step that takes much time, and even that isn’t too bad.

~ Florentines stay fresh for a long time; unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they last a long time. It all depends on how well you can hide them. From me.

Florentines

From Paris Boulangerie-Pâtisserie, by Linda Dannenberg (Gramercy Books, 1994)
Yield: 24 cookies

Ingredients
2 3/4 cups (200 g) sliced blanched almonds
1/3 cup (125 ml) heavy cream
7 tablespoons (100 g) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons (100 g) sugar
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon honey
1/3 cup, lightly packed (50 g) candied cherries, chopped fine
1/4 cup (50 g) candied orange peel, chopped fine [note: I omitted the cherries and used 100 g total candied orange peel; this is the recipe I’ve used for years.]
1/3 cup (50 g) all-purpose flour
8 ounces (250 g) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Method

Preheat the oven to 375ºF (190ºC).
Toast the sliced almonds by spreading them on a baking sheet, then putting them in the preheated oven. Stir them once or twice, until lightly golden, about 8 minutes. Set aside to cool.
In a saucepan, heat the cream, butter, sugar, and honey over medium heat, stirring, until the mixture is melted and comes to a boil. With a candy thermometer in the mixture, boil without stirring for about 3 minutes, until the mixture comes to a temperature of about 230ºF (120ºC), or until it forms a soft ball when a small amount is dropped into a cup of ice water. Remove from heat.
Stir in the toasted almonds and chopped fruit, then stir in the flour until blended.
Pour the mixture into a buttered 9-inch (23-cm) square baking ban and set aside to cool. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for at least an hour (overnight is fine).
When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 425ºF (220ºC).
Butter a 12-well muffin tin (or two tins, if you have them). Scoop up a tablespoon of the mixture and press it into the bottom of a well to spread it evenly and thinly (you may need to use more or less of the mixture to get the thickness of the cookie you want, depending on the size of the wells). Repeat to fill the muffin tins, or until you run out of the mixture. (Tip: If the mixture is lumpy, butter the bottom of a glass or other smooth object that has a slightly smaller diameter than the well, then use it to press down on the mixture to help it spread evenly.)
Bake the cookies until they are golden, 5 to 6 minutes. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool in the pan for about 4 minutes (here’s another opportunity to flatten the cookies while the mixture is warm; use the same buttered glass as mentioned above).
While the florentines are still warm, gently coax them out of the pan with a spatula (I used an offset icing spatula) and transfer to a wire rack covered with parchment paper or a silpat. If necessary, gently reshape the cookies into circles while they are still warm.
If you have any unbaked mixture left, repeat the well-filling and cookie-baking process until all the mixture is used.
When the florentines are completely cooled, melt the chocolate over hot water until just smooth but not too hot. With a spatula, spread the smooth bottom of each florentine evenly with chocolate, then place the florentine back on the parchment paper/silpat, chocolate side up, to cool. If you like, use a pastry comb or fork to trace a pattern in the chocolate before it becomes firm.

Stored in an airtight container, florentines will keep for about two weeks.
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To see the round up of the group’s international dessert recipes, visit the My Kitchen My World (MKMW) site. (You can also see where the group has already traveled.) To join in, just make a dish (or more) for the month’s country, blog about it, and put a link to your post in the comments on the MKMW page.

Next month, we travel to Poland, my choice! (We were supposed to go in November, but most of us got a bit busy…)

The real goal is coming home

For the two or three of you not following the Scott Expedition blog on Boxing Day, refreshing your screen every hour through the evening, I’m happy to report that Ben and Tarka made it to the South Pole on December 26, 2013.

As Ben puts it, the scene was nothing like Scott’s arrival in that cold, desolate spot 101 years ago, yet entirely similar:

In short, I’m afraid to say -though it’s probably quite apt- that I concur with Captain Scott himself when he said of the South Pole “Great God this is an awful place”. For him, of course, there was nothing there at all. A patch of snow at the heart of a barren, deeply inhospitable continent. For us, it felt like walking into a cross between an airport, a junkyard and a military base. Or perhaps a scene that was omitted from a Star Wars film: skiing along with sacks swinging from our backs, futuristic mirrored goggles and hoods framed by coyote fur, we looked like two bounty hunters approaching some sort of outpost on a frozen planet.

In both cases, they were just happy to turn away from the long-aimed for spot and head for home.

And that, of course, is the tricky part. After 60+ days of pulling hard, laying depots, walking through whiteouts, and expending everything, they now have to retrace their steps, find the cached depots, and hope they planned well enough and travel quickly enough to make it back to safety.

There’s a sense that, in this Internet age, Ben and Tarka are not so alone as Scott, Bowers, Wilson, Evans, and Oates because we are watching. They’re in satellite communication with their base team and us, uploading blog posts, videos, and photos. But that really doesn’t lessen the hard work ahead that only they can do, one step at a time. They are most definitely out there on their own, walking another 900 miles across Antarctica to safety.

That they’ve chosen to make this journey of their own free will, just to see if they can do it, doesn’t mean it isn’t devilishly difficult to do. Many before, who had no more reason to go than the desire to do it, have tried and failed.

This armchair explorer, warm by her fire, will be watching with bated breath.

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p.s. In a semi-related story, Conservators of the New Zealand Antarctic Trust have recently discovered a box of 22 negatives left by Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party. The negatives were found in a block of ice in Scott’s hut. Shackleton didn’t make it to the South Pole, but he made it home. And now so have these amazing photos.

52 Photos ~ My choice

Winter break.

Lots of lounging by the fire, lots of staring out the window at the white, lots of opening packages, lots of sliding on the ice on the way down the path.

Lots of snacking.

Including the goats, who make short work of balsam branches sawn from the Christmas tree. And then inquire, with their balsam breath:

Any chance you have some cookies in that coat pocket?

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