Archive for October, 2008

  • Random Knittyness

    Date: 2008.10.30 | Category: Knitting | Response: 2

    We were walking along Wellington Street (um is there only one in Ottawa Street because names change and are reused so much I feel I should ask?) a few weeks ago when we noticed something slightly unusual. Knitting. Lots and lots of knitting.

    Cameraless though I was I did have my trusty cellphone and it’s very unspectacular camera so I faithfully took photos of every bit of knittyness that I found – from the fire hydrant cozy to pole scarves. Alas for some unknown reason only one picture saved. DOH! But I give you random knittyness, even if it is in a much smaller dose than originally intented.

    Now if you only saw one such example you’d probably be inclined to think that someone merely dropped their scarf and some nice person picked it up off the ground and tied it on the pole. However when you see a scarf on every pole for several blocks and see a fire hydrant cozy it can only mean one thing.

    The street is being taken over by knitters.

    And it is! I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Wabi-Sabi had recently opened. I haven’t made it in yet but I have driven past and it looks totally drool-worthy from the outside. Knitters taking over the community – I love it!

  • Do you get blog blocked?

    Date: 2008.10.28 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 1

    Do you ever do that thing where you think you really ought to blog about something and you’re not going to blog about anything until you blog about that something but then you don’t know what you want to say about it so you don’t blog at all and then you’re blog just gets quieter and quieter to to point where you start to think why bother?

    Yeah. Me too. (Also holy run-on sentence Batman.)

    So that’s what happened. I really meant to blog about something but then I didn’t and then I didn’t know what to blog about so here we are.

    Also, I went way into overthinking mode about the “purpose” of this blog and what I wanted it to be or what it “should” be. Yes, I went to that place that utterly and completely makes you superconscious which totally kills any desire to write.

    Screw that.

    My tag line says word vomit and word vomit it shall continue to be. Because sometimes I need a place just to throw words out there to the masses with no purpose or plan behind them. Or at least not often. It will be a personal/knitting/foodish/anything but books (well…mostly)/whatever I want it to be that day blog.

    Yes, I overthink things. And yes, I need a thack upside the head for it.

  • Thanksgiving Spaghetti

    Date: 2008.10.13 | Category: What's for Dinner?, sometimes I ramble | Response: 2

    I’m trying to write about BlogHer Boston but it’s a little too big and I’m a little too tired at the moment. Instead I’m satisfying with being back home where I have a large furry cat sleeping beside me. She was so happy that we were back home that she had to wake us up at 4:45am and tell us all over again with headbutts and cuddles. I’m thinking about Thanksgiving dinner, which sadly is not turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots and mashed sweet potatoes with honey and ginger. It was originally going to be Chinese takeout but I feel like something soothing and comforting. Something that is warm and homey.

    I am craving spaghetti with homemade pasta sauce.

    I don’t have a recipe. Homemade pasta sauce was one of the very first recipes that my mother let me play with. We were a strict meat and poatoes kind of family but my mother used to make a pretty good pasta sauce. She’d make it about once a year and freeze a bunch. I later found out it was the pasta sauce from The Better Homes and Gardens Complete Step-by-Step Cookbook (my mom gave me her copy the last time I was home but refused to give up her Five Roses cookbook). She followed it to the letter, using the instant beef bouillon granules and canned mushrooms. We used Kraft Parmesan cheese out of a green plastic container. Rather than using garlic bread or a baguette we sopped up the extra sauce with homemade biscuits. We drank milk with it. It was one of my favourite meals and as far as I was concerned we didn’t have it nearly enough.

    Eventually, when I was old enough to use the stove with minimal supervision (I guess I was nine or ten) and my mother got tired of my complaining she let me start to play. Back then I first started experimenting it was pretty basic poor man’s spaghetti, which is to say rather than using canned tomatoes or tomato sauce my first pasta sauces were made with Heinz tomato soup. (All of you that bow down before the altar of Campbell’s tomato soup are wrong, Heinz is where it’s at, but I still buy Campbell’s for Kit-Cat when she’s coming over).  We used to freeze ground beef in individual patties (1/4 lb per patty, maybe a bit less) so I’d get a couple to play with. I was also given free range of the spice cabinet. Sometimes I’d go overboard with the dried oregano. Other times I’d put in a few too many crushed chilies. But as far as I was concerned it was fanstastic, even if not to my mother’s standards.

    I grew up and moved on and moved out. I was 1200kms away from home and would crave something homey and comforting. And cheap. I was a poor starving student. The internet searches started and through much trial, error and constant evolution I learned how to turn out a pretty tasty pasta sauce. I’d make big batches of it at a time and freeze it ziplock bags in my tiny, so not frost-free freezer. It was a great meal to pull out and have on during exams, when friends came over or whenever I was feeling world-weary. I eventually weaned myself off of bottled pasta sauces and used my own exclusively. I developed a decent meat-free marinara sauce as well as my super-meaty sauce.

    There’s no recipe. It’s not gourmet. It’s easy. It’s different every time but yet still always tastes right.

    There’s a simple base of onions, carrots, garlic and because I can never figure out what to do with the rest of the celery I use celery seed. I use canned tomatoes, usually whatever brand is on sale. I alternate between crushed, diced and whole and I’ve tried every combination of them that you can think of. I may or may not add tomato paste. If I’m making a meat sauce I’ll use ground beef or Italian sausage removed from it’s casings. Or both. If I have pancetta I’m not against throwing that in too. If I have them I use mushrooms. When making a veggie sauce I love to thrown in grated zucchini. I mostly use dried spices but if I have fresh I’ll use those. I top it with Parmesan that’s been freshly grated on my microplane. If there’s garlic bread I use garlic bread. If not I still sop up the extra sauce with homemade biscuits (there’s *always* some in my freezer). I eat it on spaghetti, bowties, whatever is in my pantry. I use it in lasagna. I still freeze it in ziplock bags. I still sometimes use too much oregano or basil.

    The pasta is boiling right now and we’ll soon sit down to a late lunch/early dinner of Thanksgiving spaghetti before Lee goes off to do his volunteer shift. We’ll load our plates high with pasta and sauce and thick covering of grated Parmesan. We’ll drink milk with it. We’ll sop of the extra sauce with biscuits. The stove will be splattered with sauce.

    And it will all be thanks to my mother who let me play in the kitchen when I was barely old enough to use the stove. We will sit down to a great meal because my mother taught me how to feed myself and those that I care about with food that comes from my heart and my hands. I’m thankful for so many things in my life, but that is one that I carry with me every day. Thanks Mom.

  • Oh the time they have a changed

    Date: 2008.10.10 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

    I’m sitting in my hotel room in Burlington, MA where I’ll be attending BlogHer Boston tomorrow.

    I have consumed 2 pints of beer and I’m ready to pour myself into bed and sleep for a good 8 hours. It wasn’t really all that long ago (6 years, give or take a year) when I used to go out and drink a couple of pitchers a night. I weighed at least 20lbs less at the time.

    But some things do never change. I was ID’ed at the hotel bar. Yay me! I’ve yet never failed to get ID’ed when ordering alcohol in the US.

  • I’m challenging you

    Date: 2008.10.04 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

    I’m challenging my readers and fellow bloggers to give just $1 to get books into a sixth grade classroom. Will you rise to the challenge?

    Head over to Sassymonkey Reads for details.

  • Fall

    Date: 2008.10.03 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 2

    It’s cold here.

    No really, it is. Our heat has not been turned on yet, and no we haven’t complained about it because it’s only the beginning of October and if we controlled and paid for the heat we probably wouldn’t have turned it on yet either. But the last two evenings we have broken down and turned on the fireplace (it’s gas, or electric, or something).

    Because Kit-Cat is coming to visit and we don’t want her to die from death due to Piper fur we’ve removed the futon from the office (aka the guest room). It’s been moved into the living room, the armchair moved to a new place and with the fire on it’s really cozy. So cozy we’re almost thinking about keeping it that way.

    I’ve been hiding out in the sunroom today, trying to get some writing done. They are less distractions out here. Ok, except for those 10 minutes when the cat was stalking a housefly. It’s also cold out here. I’m wearing a hoodie, jeans, and slippers and I have a blanket over my legs. It’s still cold but every now and then the sun filters its way through the clouds and sends warm waves of heat in my direction.

    The backyard is covered in leaves that I’m thankful I don’t have to rake (ah the joys of renting). They crunch under our feet when we walk to the truck.

    I find myself wanting warm and hearty soups, hot cider and tea. Pumpkin pie and roasted squash.

    Fall is here.

  • 101 things update

    Date: 2008.10.02 | Category: 101 things | Response: 1

    Still slowly picking away at my 101 things. In September I did the following:

    1. Read another  “missed” classic – only 7 more to go!

    40. Organize my email x3 1 – I’m working on a way to response to items faster. I’m a bad, bad emailer these days.

    91. Learn how to sew – I haven’t learned how to sew but I have found someone who can teach me how to sew. Wave hello to Halyma whom I met an an Ottawa Social Media Breakfast. (Uh, yeah, she’s one of the many people I keep meaning to email…)

    97. Go back through old blog entries and fix the formatting x4 2 – this is a work in progress and I think 2 or 3 more sessions should have it done. I hope.

    What am I working on this month?

    1. Read a “missed” classic. x10 7 (Jane Eyre, Mansfield Park, The Woman in White) -  hope to get two more done this month (that tie into both the RIP III Challenge and the A-Z challenge)

    2. Complete the a-z reading challenge – 26 books (update June 3/07 – 10 of 26 read, update Jan 1/08 – 11 reads) – I hope to get two or three more of these knocked off

    16. Go to BlogHer – slightly cheating on this one but I am attending BlogHer Boston on October 11. I’m counting it.

    33. Purge old magazines x2 (1) – I have to get rid of some. They are cluttering the place up.

    41. Backup my laptop once per month x6 – I really need to do a backup

    42. Purge and shred old files x3 1 – See above re clutter

    43. Update my portfolio – I need to pick out some blog posts to add to my writing portfolio – any from here or BlogHer that you particularly liked?

    81. Take a candelit bubble bath x10 8 – because it’s cold here and baths are warm

    84. Go to a trivia night at a pub – I’m on the prowl, anyone know a good one in Ottawa?

    85. Knit myself something – I’m almost finished a pair of socks. They don’t fit but that’s beside the point.

    86. Send someone a homemade gift – anyone have size 6 feet? I can send you a nice pair of orange handknit socks. I’m a size 6.5 and they are a wee bit too small for me.

    95. Create a blog book – I’d like to start one at least. Similar to my porfolio but of posts that I like, not just ones I’ve written.

    96. Update the blogroll on my book blog x3 (1) – Since I moved my book blog Cat is the only one on the blogroll. Ha!

    98. Fix the labels on this blog – easiest to do when fixing formatting

    99. Try a new recipe and blog about it x10 (9) – I’ve got a backlog of these to blog about

    100. Post on my food blog on this blog about foodie stuff once a week for a month x6 – I have lots to say about food that I never say

    101. Blog every day (on a single blog) for a month x3 – I thought I was going to do this last month. Got to the end of Sept and missed a day. DOH!

  • Ottawa Farmer’s Market

    Date: 2008.10.01 | Category: What's for Dinner?, sometimes I ramble | Response: 1

    It’s funny how when my blog was missing in lala land I had oodles of stuff to say. Now? Nada. So let’s talk about the Ottawa Farmer’s Market shall we?

    When I mention that I go to a farmer’s market most people assume that I mean the Byward Market. The Byward Market is lovely but we don’t go there often (probably just as well as I cannot be trusted near cheesemongers or La Botega). Next people assume I mean the Parkdale Market. The Parkdale Market is convenient for us but we don’t go there often. Actually, most of the time when we are there we are buying fresh flowers (or leeks, they have great prices on leeks).

    So I’ve started to say that I go to the Landsdowne Farmer’s Market. The thing about this market is that that produce is local, produced within 100kms of the market (or maybe it’s miles, I just assumed it was kms seeing as we’re metric and all). There is one exception to that, there is a vendor from south of Toronto that sells peaches, plums, grapes etc that we can’t get locally. Some people originally got their panties in a bunch over it because they aren’t really “local” but from where I’m sitting it’s peaches from Ontario and not from another country. You know?

    So every Sunday morning we wake up, make a pot of coffee, throw on some clothes and head out the door with our travel mugs and reusable canvas bags. I love being out in cities early in the morning, when they are quiet and still. It’s not a long drive to Landsdowne from our place but it’s pretty with the early morning light reflecting off the canal. We see more runners than cars. Sometimes there’s a charity run and we spend too much time starting at people trying to figure out which run it is.

    We rarely have to pay to park at Landsdowne, only on days when there are other events. (During the SuperEX the market moves to a nearby park). When we do pay for parking we take our parking stub to the market’s information desk and they give us a voucher of equal value to spent at any of the vendors.

    We usually go to the market with a list. We usually wander up and down the entire length of the market before stopping to buy anything. Then we strategize – what do we want to buy that’s not on our list? More often than not it’s butter tarts from Phyllis’ Baking (she makes the best butter tarts ever, her pie is pretty darned good too).

    One of the things that we love is that because the market is about being local, more often than not it’s the farmers and their families that we talk to. There’s sometime satisfying about buying your food from the people who grow it or make it. When we say we love the butter tarts we don’t get told, “I’ll pass that along.” We’re told, “Thank you!” When we have a question about how to prepare something we’re not greated with a shrug but with, “Well, this is what I usually do.” When we buy elk maple sausages the sellers tell us that they were made with the maple syrup from the vendor two stalls down.

    It’s more than a market, it’s a community.

    We started going regularly a few weeks after we moved to Ottawa (or rather after I moved and Lee moved back). We’ve only missed Sunday’s when we’ve been out of town. And something we did every week was fill out a ballot for one of the free baskets that they give out every Sunday. A couple of weeks ago we won one and oh my goodness that basket was overflowing! Check it out.

    That is a heck of a lot of food. In no particular order the basket contained

    • 1/2lt of Pascale’s homemade ice-cream (we chose the Honey Raspberry Duo, it’s goooood and made with raspberries from one of the other vendors)
    • 1 wedge of Orati Mountain Cheese (which we had bought once before, it’s yummy and Piper approves)
    • 1 sage plant
    • 1 chili plant
    • Marrison Manor Organic spring salad (yummy sprouts)
    • 1 package of Oatmeal Raisin Cookies from Just a Bite (yes, they are bite sized and yummy)
    • Loaf of quick bread (we’re not sure what kind, I suspect zucchini, it’s in the freezer)
    • 3 cobs of corn
    • 1 bunch of multi-coloured carrots
    • 1 bunch of greens
    • 1 lebonese cucumber
    • 1 yellow bell pepper
    • 1 small eggplant
    • 2 bunches of beets (we roast our beets here, yummy, also used the greens and decided I’m not a fan of beet greens…)
    • 1 leek (bought more leeks, made potato leek soup)
    • 1 lb cranberries (in the freezer, will make cranberry sauce soon)
    • 1 basket of Ontario Coronation grapes (verrrrry yummy)
    • 1 small basket of tomatoes (I suspect they were an heirloom variety of a plum/roma – they were dark and kind of purpley with a sweet, slightly smokey flavour)
    • 1 basket of mixed yellow and red romas (I made roasted tomato soup and burned myself but the soup was yummy)
    • 1 jar of local unpasturized honey
    • 1 jar of Oven’s Berry Farm strawberry jam
    • Lentil and almond dip from Emily’s Kitchen (a bit like hummus but with with a curry flavour)
    • 1 itty bitty pumpkin
    • 1 package of spicy Hungarian Czabi sausages from Bearbrooke Farm (we buy our eggs from them)
    • 1 beeswax votive candle

    We also received coupons for some discounts (a couple they we didn’t use but appreciated the thought behing them). One that we did use was for a free burrito from Zucante. It was fantastic and they make real iced-tea (I had a choice between sweet or unsweetened tea).

    In short, we got a heck of a lot. We were out of potatoes so we had to pick some up, along with the extra leeks I mentioned above and then we decided to treat ourselves. We bought a bison roast from Pykeview Meadows, the local bison farm and one of our favourite vendors. We invited Lee’s parents over for dinner and had a meal of roast bison, mashed potatoes, multi-coloured carrots, my mother’s homemade mustard pickles, homemade bannock, cucumber slices with homemade dressing (it’s a sort of like  French dressing that we call cucumber sauce) and cake and ice-cream for dessert. No, we could move when we were done eating.

    And I’m very happy to report that I have not yet killed either of the plants. Go me!

    The farmer’s market will shut down for the season at the end of October and we’ll have to go back to searching for decent produce at local stores. We’re going to miss our Sunday morning routine. We’re going to miss all the vendors. If you are in Ottawa and haven’t been to the Landsdowne market I highly encourage you head there one Sunday this month (or Thursday, they are there Thursday afternooons too). Yummy produce, friendly vendors. What more could you want?