Dave Pollard writes today on rooftop gardening as away of bringing the produce closer to the consumer and making cities self-sufficient (a friend was telling me awhile back that the amount of produce you could grow hydroponically in a couple of dozen 60 story “office” towers is staggering). Now Dave is fast on his way to becoming a full fledged vegetarian and then on to a vegan lifestyle. His objections to meat are on both ethical terms, cruel treatment of animals, and on practical terms , wasted use of land and pollution of the environment.

Well Dave , I agree with you though I’m far too weak to give up meat. However science once again comes to the rescue of the ethically weak, such as myself. Unless you are going to bear right of the fundamentalist Christians and state that a muscle cell is precious life then these guys may be on to something here. Assuming, and yes that is a big assumption, that this can be made economically feasible (and I suspect it can - though fleeting thoughts of Soylent Green keep harrassing me) then this provides an ethical out for those who want to eat meat. What’s more the meat will be better for them.

Great idea. What do you think?

I can’t believe R.W. Knudson & Sons don’t have a corporate web site (at least I can’t find it in a quick Google search) but they should. If you are not already an addict of one of their many flavoured Spritzers I can guarantee that one taste and you will be. Not only are they delicious but they have no added sugar or artificial flavours. Just concentrated juices and carbonated water, all the sugar comes naturally from the fruit juice. They are the perfect replacement for soda pop; they are sweet, carbonated, healthy and satisfy that urge for soda pop. While they cost more (about 85¢ CDN each) when compared to the per can price when buying say a 24 pack of Coke , they are infinitely better. Give them a try and you’ll never go back, but don’t blame me when you start really jonesing for them

Update: I did finally find their website thanks to a comment by Pericat. However their webdesigner ought to beshot for really lousy search engine positioning. Doing a Google search on RW Knudson, Kudson spritzers, Knudson & Sons, does not (at least on the first 20 results) return a website for the company.

OK bad pun on Chicken pot pie I know, but hey it got you to read this Yes I cancelled my trip to Vancouver, I decided I would do that on the Victoria Day weekend in May when theweather and roads would be considerably better.

One of the disadvantages to living alone is having to cook for one. It is limiting. You get in the habit of buying small prepackaged cuts of meat, no roasts or whole chickens as generally you can’t eat it fast enough, or you grow tired of the leftovers and food gets wasted. Still, I love barbequed chicken and not having a grill of my own anymore I occasionally buy a BBQ chicken from the local grocery store. After several days of chicken sandwiches I knew I wasn’t going to get through it in time that way so today, being a holiday, I had the time to make a chicken pot pie. Mmmmmmm good.

Take a nice big fat Vidalia sweet onion and chop it up, do the same to 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, a couple of carrots and stalks of celery. Chop some mushrooms and sauté the lot in a dutch oven. Throw in a good bunch of fresh thyme, lots of fresh ground black pepper, a good grating of fresh nutmeg, a bay leaf and about 1/2 the meat of a BBQ chicken nicely diced, then set mixture aside (about 2 cups). While you are doing that melt 4 tablespoons (2oz) of butter in a saucepan, add 4 tablespoons of flour and cook until very lightly browned over medium heat and then slowly add 4 cups of chicken stock whisking constantly to prevent lumping. Cook sauce until it is thick then add to chicken and vegetables in the dutch oven. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Make a basic baking powder biscuit dough and cut into rounds as for biscuits and place on top of the chicken mixture and bake at 350F until the biscuits are nicely raised and browned. You could also cover the top with a flaky pie crust, just make certain you vent it well.

I have really been craving a steak for quite a while now, but good steaks are just too expensive and I do not like cheap cuts of beef. However I always go through them at the grocery store hoping to find a deal. Today I found one and what a deal. I’m still tryingto feel guilty about taking advantage of it but the gult just ain’t happening. I spend so much money in that store that I figure if they screw up and I can take advantage of it then it’s just a good customer reward (well that’s what I tell myself anyway - have to assuage that conscience don’t you know ;)). How did they screw up? Well NY Strip Loin Steaks are normally $19.90/kg or $8.90/lb ($16.04 and $7.17 USD). I found a package of 4 mislabeled as center cut pork loin and going for $9.90/kg or $4.41/lb ($7.98 and $3.55 USD). I snatched that package up immediately and did not say anything to the butcher about it. I figured if the cashier caught it fine , otherwise I’m eating steak tonight and eat it I did! (along with butternut squash with nutmeg, snow peas, sweet potato/gala apple mixture and 4 peppercorn sauce) Yum!

So there I was cruising the aisles at the local supermarket when I noticed a new, OK new to me, product in the soup section. Campbell’s has some new stocks available and one of them is Thai Broth. It has lots of lemongrass in it. I knew right then and there I would have to try it out tonight.

I bought some nice thick center cut pork loin chops along with some oranges, apples and sweet potatoes to complete the meal. When I got home I marinated the chops in some fresh ground ginger, crushed garlic, fresh squeezed orange juice and teriyaki soy sauce. Then I microwaved the sweet potato in its skin, let it cool, skinned it and then sliced it up for pan frying. I squeezed the juice of a couple of oranges and added an equal amount of the Thai Broth. WOW is it ever aromatic.

When it came dinner time I warmed the juice/broth mixture, added the marinade from the chops, corrected the seasoning a bit and thickened it with cornstarch. Used my heavy cast itron stove top grill to grill the chops, steamed some broccoli florets and julienned carrots, and panfried the sweet potato in butter and olive oil along with a chopped Gala apple.

It was such a satisfying dinner. If you find this Thai Broth at your grocery store do not pass it by. I’m going to try it next as part of the liquid used to cook some rice then sauté some chicken in some Thai red curry paste to go with it. Yum Yum Yum.

I’ve mentioned before that my grocer hates me. If there was any doubt in the past it has been eliminated when cruising the store on Christmas Eve I couldn’t help but notice the rather large number of new cheeses occupying centre stage by the deli. Well. it being Christmas and all I had to try one and oh my is it ever good. British Columbia is blessed with a number of very good cheese makers and the Village cheese Co. from Armstrong is certainly one of them. This is the first time I’ve tried thier product and I’m very impressed. I bought their aged white cheddar with gewüztraminer cheese and I’m having difficulty putting it back in the fridge. I see a number of others on their list that I want to try starting with the RedHot Pepper and Original Canadian Maple Cheddar varieties. Now I wonder whose gewüztraminer they used because you see BC is also the home to some of the world’s best white wine wineries and gewüztraminer does quite well here, particularly Summerhill Estate’s (disclaimer: I used to be a sales rep for them) as they tend to make it drier than most gewüztraminers.

Well the Holiday time is fast approaching and no doubt some of you may be entertaining and looking for ideas for munchies. Here’s what I’m making to nosh on tonight while I’m zoning on the tube.

• pre-heat oven to 350° F
• 1 corn or flour tortilla - there are a lot of interesting new styles of tortillas available. For this one I’m using one that is flavoured with sun dried tomatoes
• place tortilla on parchement paper on a baking sheet
• if you like it spicy baste the tortilla with hot sauce, or my favourite these days Tabasco Chipotle sauce.
• shred a variety of cheeses onto the tortilla - tonight it is Fruilano, Asiago and Gruyere, but I can see this really going with some smoked cheddar to compliment the smoky Chipotle flavour
• place in oven until the cheese is completely baked - not just melted - you want the cheese to get crispy which means it needs to separate out some of the oils. Keep an eye on it to make certain the eges of the tortiulla are not burning

When done remove from oven and cut into wedges - let cool and they will go chewy/crispy and delicious.

To grate the firm cheeses for this treat there is nothing better than this neat tool from Lee Valley Tools. Once you use one of these for grating cheese or citrus zest you will never look back.

I think I may have to start seriously working on my recipe site again. I keep putting it off hoping I’ll get the time. inclination etc to learn how to use databases so I can drop the recipes into a database instead of individual pages. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen - I’m a little too intimidated by it all and don’t really know where to start. Going through my referrer stats today I saw a consistent trend over the past year that somewhere around 25 to 30% of the search strings that are bringing people to my whole site are food related. Look at this table for this month so far:

That means roughly 5% of the hits to my whole site are for recipes and that doesn’t include the searches that fall outside of the top 20. Time to add some more recipes I guess

It’s Thanksgiving weekend in Canada this weekend (yea 3 days off) so I decided it was time to cook a decent meal for a change. I love roasted veggies but just don’t have time and energy during the week to do much more than omelettes, fajitas etc. In other words I haven’t exactly been eating well for some time. So today I hied myself off to the grocers (avoiding the temptation to buy more cheese too!) and bought a lot of different root veggies to roast.

When roasting vegetables try to cut them into chunks about the same size an traditionally they would be cut peasant style which is rough, fairly large chunks.

Roast Veggies for 4

2 carrots, scrubbed and cut. Try them unpeeled. especially if the carrots are freshly picked.
1 large parsnip peeled and cut.
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 head garlic, peeled
4 small red potatos, scrubbed and quartered
4 large or8 small brussel sprouts, peeled and halved
1/2 large red onion, cut in half root to tip then along length again then cross quarter.
4 medium sized beets, peeled and cut

Once you have chopped everything throw it all into a large bowl and add extra virgin olive oils just to coat, mix well. Transfer to a roasting pan and toss in some fesh herbs - I like rosemary and thyme with a bay leaf or two. Sprinkle generously with kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Roast in a 350F oven, stir several times, until veggies are cooked and have a crisp coating. For a nice variation when you remove the veggies from the oven toss them with a little balsamic vinegar.

These vegetables will be really quite sweet when done like this. Tonight I had them with a teriyaki ginger chicken breast.

Tomorrow I think I’ll make a nice beef stew with the slow cooker I just bought today.

I think my grocer must hate me. I mean there I was trying to buy groceries that would be kind to my waistline and as I pass the dairy section I discover a whole new array of imported cheeses. Oh, dear. I do have such a weakness for fine cheeses and none of those namby-pamby, girlie men low fat cheeses either, I’ll have you know.

I was forced, forced I say, to buy both an apple smoked cheddar cheese and an Apricot Wensleydale, just narrowly getting out of there without buying the Cranberry Wensleydale but who knows the next time…..

Maybe its not my grocer though. Notice these are all British cheeses! Yes that’s it, it’s an MI5 operation. Tony Blair is trying to get rid of me for criticizing him. No, that’s too obvious. I know, it must be a black op by the Bush cabal to get even with me for all the nasty things I’ve said about Bush and the neocons. Yeah that’s it, just their style, destroy their critics and put the blame on some lackey.

Well there you go. It’s just not my fault

I’ve often in recent years run into young people who, upon learning that I went to cooking school way back when, say they are planning on doing the same, that they want to become chefs. Now I have a love of fine food, and I truly love the opportunity to cook for others but I loathe doing it for a living, which is why I quit. I tend to look at these people as if they aren’t quite all there, if you know what I mean, two eggs short of an omelette as it were.

Oh I know where so much 0f this comes from of course. After all, I am a certified Food Network junkie. But the Food Network is to cooking like Disney is to animals, it ain’t real. These kids watch Emeril (shudder - the man is a buffoon, has bad hygeine and zero presentation skills), or Iron Chef (great entertainment and tremendous talent), or watch the Bocuse d’ Or or one of the other stars in ascendant and think , ya that’s what I’m going to do. Oh how little they know what they are really letting themselves in for because I gotta tell you gang it ain’t like that in the real world unless you own your own restaurant and even then not usually. Oh no, Anthony Bourdain, probably my favoutite of the Food Network cooks, tells it like it really is in his book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“What most people don’t get about professional-level cooking is that it is not at all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavors and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking—the real business of preparing the food you eat—is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way. The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator…. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions”

and that my friends is what it’s really all about in the bright big world of professional cooking. Sometimes you luck out though. I worked for a 4 star hotel for 18 years (not in the kitchen) but during that time I became “friends” with the head chef (he’s now Executive Chef of one of Sandal’s tropical resorts) and he taught me a lot. He is a traditional Swiss trained chef - methodical, precise, demanding. He was also very innovative and for some time he was the manager of Canada’s Culinary Olympics team that won quite a few gold medals. The Sous Chefs and 1st cooks that worked under him were encouraged to enter competitions and develop their talents (oh did I forget to mention that serious wannabe chefs have zero social life because they are working 12 to 14 hours a day 6/7 days a week and only getting paid for 40 hours a week, especially when they make sous chef and go on salary? the dues you pay babe, the dues you pay).

So when I hear such enthusiasm in youth, I don’t try to squash it but I do try to fimd out if they’ve ever worked in a kitchen and have a clue what they are letting themselves in for. If cooking and food isn’t an all consuming passion of yours then it is going to be a tough job.

If you’re single like me, and you do not eat a lot of home made salads, then you probably don’t go through a head of lettuce quickly enough to avoid it wilting or going bad another way on you. I’m here to tell you the secret to keeping a head of lettuce quite fresh for more than a week in your refridgerator. What you say, impossible! But no my friends it is true.

First when you bring it home from the store (do buy the freshest you can - be picky ) run it under cold water - or better still submerge it in cold water for a few minutes then drain. Do NOT use a salad spinner to drain off hte excess cold water and do not seperate the leaves from the stem. Wrap the whole head in paper towels and put in a ziploxk bag and seal. Stick in your fridge - that’s it. When you need some lettuce remove from bag, unravel the wet paper towel carefully and remove what you need - wash and spin at this point just what you asre going to use. Re-wrap the lettuce, zip it back up and put back in the fridge. Depending on how fresh the lettuce was to start with you can keep it crisp for close to 2 weeks this way. This works great on loose leaf lettuce varieties. I haven’t tried it on iceberg because…….. well I just never buy the tasteless stuff.

If you’re in North America you’ve probably seen hte Cadbury’s Caramilk commercials that center around the secret of how they get the creamy caramel in the center of the bar. For those of you that are interested what they use is a soft center fondant with caramel flavouring. Soft fondants are common in dessert and candy making. They are firm until covered in chocolate at which point they liquify (thanks to an egg white that is kneaded into the sugar mixture). So there you go Cadbury’s, the secret is out now quite annoying me with those silly assed, puerile commercials will you.

Yes dear friends those are ALL cookbooks. It’s an addiction. Fortunately living where I do I haven’t had much chance to add any recently You know you have a problem when you have to have a bookcase solely for your kitchen.

One of the planet’s best known and most venerable cooks, Julia Child, died today at age 91. No person did more to raise the standard of cooking in North America or to make fine cooking accessible to the average person than she did. She was the first of America’s celebrity TV chefs with the 1963 public TV program “The French Chef“. Her books are to this day best sellers in the cookbook market and no cook’s shelf should be without her Mastering the Art of French Cooking, mine isn’t.