Fruit bowl deconstructed

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They weren't kidding

When i went hunting for some recipes with which to use the preserved lemons I had made, i came across more than a handful that named them the "secret ingredient". After this tagine, there is no longer any doubt in my mind. Not capers, nor caraffe olives or saffron...it was these humble lemons that put the salmon right over the top:

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A cold morning

Our ears were so cold on the way to school this morning that i was determined to find a wooly solution: apple cycling muffs


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Shortbread variations

This year, in addition to the lemon zest and fresh ginger shortbread i've come to love, i tried sour cherry cocoa nibs shortbread.



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Inverted pie

Crumble is the new "it" dessert round here. And when i say crumble i mean the traditional French approach to it, which means the topping consists of flour, butter, and sugar.

It reminds me of an inverted pie because i tend to press in my pie crusts, lending to a rather rustic look, instead of rolling it out neatly. The crumble is an upside-down easier version of pie. We've tried it with blueberries and pears as well as bananas, pears and cashews. There's a ton of fruit combinations still to be tried!


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Grape juice

Yesterday Eily and his cousins made grape juice, by pressing grapes they found in the schoolyard. When i went into the kitchen afterwards, these tools were out.





By the way, the juice was actually pretty good.

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Grilled summer fruit

Sourdough pancakes

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Apple seeds

Eily made himself a patio. Here he sits, overlooking his best friend's yard, eating an apple and saving the seeds to plant in his garden.


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Spring popsicles

Strawberry puree in a new silicone mould we're trying out.





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Dairy-free pastry

Berry pie with coconut oil crust:





Empanadas with sunflower oil and coconut oil:





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Sour cherry shortbread hearts

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Ginger pear cake

Our current potluck favourite.





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Apple sauce

We bought a couple bushels of organic spartans, half of them windfalls for making sauce.

Eily's remembering how much he likes it and Gabe will soon be consuming container fulls.





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mango chutney

my only two preserving goals this year, in addition to the standards, was to make more pizza sauce (a la orangette) and to make a chutney that didn't taste like vinegar. i thought if i didn't can it and freeze it instead, it wouldn't need any vinegar at all.

i used the leftover peaches, cooked them down, mashed them up, and blended them a bit. then added sugar, chilies, ginger, garlic, and salt to taste. the fastest preserving project to date.

natural pectin

i hate gelatin. but every time i want to give a dessert a thicker consistency, i'm stuck. i've tried agar agar, which besides being really expensive, also hasn't been too successful. This time, I tried natural fruit (citrus-based) pectin, which is most commonly used for thickening jam without adding sugar. It worked really quite well, creating a fabulously stiff mousse for blueberry potted cream and giving form to fruit juice. not quite like jell-o but without the horse hooves so 5 stars!

this week

i'm always looking for good recipes to use (i mean, take advantage) of the tons of fruit in our freezer and i think i found a new keeper. this is plum strudel and it should work well with all kinds of other fruit.

and here's the start of a little village i've been scheming up. more trees and soft houses to come. i'm not sure if it will be greatly used, but maybe i'll get enough satisfaction just from the process of executing an idea. and to show eily that it's possible. although, who am i kidding, he's so aware of that notion already. each day he comes up with a new thing to make - dog puppet, bird's nest and bath combined, play dinosaurs - and promptly goes about making it.

i attached an elastic to one of the roads so they can be rolled up and stashed away.

finally, a jackpot of a find. cheap large buttons from a lovely woman at a tailor shop. these babies are hard to find and normally, much too expensive.

the weekend

can winter really be over? maybe i'm not yet convinced. this week, i finished a pair of merino leggings, cut from an old sweater and waiting for its cuffs for about two months.


in truth, it was a classic spring weekend, with a lot of sun and a dose of rain, and finally some regular weekend routines again. raspberry scones in the morning, a new batch of bread baking with flax seeds and seven grain cereal, and a pizza dinner. brett made me a fig-pear-goat cheese one which i topped with local watercress

and, these are a pair of rustic bunny ears which Eily made yesterday....I couldn't resist.

picnic

there are sheets thrown up, rugs rolled, furniture moved throughout the house while the wiring gets down. the other night, we pulled down one of the sheets and laid it out like a picnic blanket, though Eily claimed it was a raft and tied us to the coffee table so we could eat quesadillas, nachos, and raspberry mousse.
the mousse was a lucy waverman recipe, although it was as simple as blending frozen raspberries and folding them into whipped cream. it's like a quick version of homemade ice cream, and i would bet you could make it with any frozen fruit with equally delicious results.

rotis

the other night, we tried making rotis - something i'd never done and Brett had tried only once. usually, when i make something ethnic, particularly something that involves dough, it either needs a lot of fine-tuning or i decide it's more worth it to order in the next time. but this time was different. they were great: spicy chickpeas and potatoes in a thin roti wrap. we had them with homemade plum chutney and hot mango chutney from ten thousand villages. which reminds me, next summer, i think i'll try freezer chutney so it won't be so vinegary. we made the roti dough using this recipe and the filling was from here.