A Walk on the Wild Side

One of my greatest regrets about my time here in Canada - and believe me, I have very few regrets about these 2 years - has been that I have never seen a moose. I had just assumed that I would, particularly as we have had several trips to Algonquin Provincial Park, famous for its moose population.

Last weekend I decided that this situation must be rectified, so I announced to Rob that we were off to the Muskoka Wildlife Centre, about an hour's drive north of home. He seemed less than impressed, but wasn't quick enough to come up with an alternative plan, so we set off.

What a day we had! The Centre is wonderful - not a zoo, but an animal sanctuary, home to many animals native to Ontario that have been rescued from some truly tragic circumstances. Flower the skunk for example, had been orphaned at a young age, along with her 8 brothers and sisters. When their parents did not return to them one day, they all left their home to find food. Sadly the first food they came upon were poisonous berries, and they all died apart from Flower who was rescued and brought to the Centre. As a result of eating the poisonous berries she had developed epilepsy which caused her to spray uncontrollably. In order to give her - and presumably the staff of the Centre - a better quality of life, she was de-scented and has lived happily (and free from epileptic fits) at the centre for the past 10 years.

We arrived at the Centre just in time for the 11am 'Meet the Creatures' session and were delighted to be able to see several animals at close quarters. Meeting Flower was much more pleasant than our previous skunk encounters... we rarely ever see them, but believe me, it's very clear when one has wandered through the garden during the night..!

Many of the animals live happily with other creatures with whom you would not expect them to be friends. Flower for example shares a home with Clover the Groundhog, a highly comical and very greedy Woodchuck who was 'surplus to requirements' at an American zoo so brought to Muskoka to become part of their education programme. She seemed to be very at home there!

Indeed, several of the animals here had been born in zoos across the continent. We were very fortunate to visit while the Centre was providing a temporary home for Aurora and Borealis, two Arctic Wolf cubs.

They were on their way to a zoo in America, and had been hand-reared since birth making them very comfortable with human company. They also seemed incredibly comfortable with their room-mate, a cheeky young raccoon with whom there was much comic rough-and-tumble!

At the back of the Centre there was a winding path through the woods, along which were many cages housing a huge variety of rescued animals. We had seen a Black Bear whilst in the Rockies last Summer, but it was lovely to get a better view of one here in Muskoka - Kootenay, a Black Bear who had been kindly but misguidedly hand-reared by a family in British Columbia. Unable to be released into the wild, Kootenay now lives a relaxed life with Kokanee the Cougar.

He seemed perfectly content with his life - although Kokanee looked less enthralled by being the object of so much human attention!

The path continued past wolves, bald eagles, beavers, wolverines, foxes, bobcats, - all manner of beasts. I was relatively disinterested in seeing Badgers - after all we have them in England - until I actually saw them! It appears that North American badgers are completely different to the badgers which I know and love - and these ones were extremely personable. Just look at that face.

We were so captivated by the animals that we stayed to see the 1pm Meet the Creatures too, where I rashly volunteered to have Kingston the Black Rat Snake (a rescued pet) draped around my neck.

I felt privileged to witness such a fantastic organisation in action, doing incredible work both in the conservation of Canadian wildlife and in the education of the public.

And yes, I finally got to see my moose! Ugly beasts, but very splendid in their own unique way.

Oooh La La!

Having a husband who travels a lot for his work has some benefits, and the fact that my aforementioned husband shares my love of food, it definitely makes life more fun. I believe I have mentioned in a previous blog post how much Rob and I love foreign supermarkets, and when Rob goes on work-trips abroad he always makes an effort to browse around the local shops and will usually bring back some interesting foodstuffs. His trip to Italy last November yielded many foodie treats - beautiful dense fig cake, chewy honeyed nougat, and a box of marrons glaces. The fig cake and nougat were quickly eaten, but the marrons glaces had sat in the cupboard for far too long. I love eating them straight from the packet, but felt sure that I was missing the opportunity to make them into something divine.

As ever, a quick question on the forum produced just the answer - a reference to Clothilde's fabulous blog 'Chocolate and Zucchini', and a recipe for Coffee Cake Chocolate Marron Glace. Don't be fooled by the name - it's a cake made to be eaten with coffee, it doesn't contain any coffee flavour. What it does contain however, is marrons glaces and sweet chestnut puree... absolutely perfect as I also had a tin or two of this delectable treat loitering in the bottom of my baking box. Don't look too closely at the photo or my shocking disregard for date-stamps on food will become all too obvious. 2005? Pah! The date means 'best before', not 'poisonous after'...

The recipe called for only half of the tin of chestnut puree, but I didn't think that using more would be a problem so I used the entire tin. I also used more marrons glaces as again, how could you have too many? For the chocolate element I used milk chocolate chips as this is what Rob prefers, and I thought that they worked very well in combination with the chestnut.

The addition of yoghurt to the cake mix produced a wonderfully moist sponge, and the profusion of chestnuts and puree sank into a wonderful dense sticky layer at the base of the cake. I think this would be fabulous as an elegant dinner-party dessert, perhaps with a dollop of whipped cream and an artistic sprinkling of icing sugar? However, we seem to have managed to eat the entire thing during the last week, simply as an accompaniment to our essential 4.30pm cup of tea. Fantastique - Merci beaucoup Clothilde!

The Cookie Project - Part 3

Bloody Men

Bloody men are like bloody buses

You wait for about a year

And as soon as one approaches your stop

Two or three others appear.

You look at them flashing their indicators,

Offering you a ride.

You're trying to read the destinations,

You haven't much time to decide.

If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.

Jump off, and you'll stand there and gaze

While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by

And the minutes, the hours, the days.

Wendy Cope

This poem always makes me smile, and sometimes I feel like re-writing it to fit various other situations... right now it should be 'Bloody Blogs'. I write nothing for what seems like months, and then all of a sudden I feel inspired to write several posts all at once.

Contrary to appearances I have been baking recently, but I have also been working full time. Just as one might assume that supply-work would be winding down for the end of the year, it's actually building to a crescendo - I'm feeling very in demand! I think that teachers are getting tired, busy writing report cards, and generally can't wait to get rid of their classes after 10 long months, so just as the children start to get hot and fractious they call in a supply teacher to spend the day with 30 kids in a non-air-conditioned classroom when the temperatures are in the high 30s. No, I exaggerate... slightly... I have had a few days like that, but generally I am loving my job and beginning to feel quite sad at the prospect of leaving the schools in which I have become a regular supply teacher.

Anyway, back to the baking... poor old Martha has lain rather neglected recently, but a few weeks ago I did try the Cream Cheese Swirl Blondies. I have long been intrigued by Brownie recipes that contain cream cheese - the tartness of the cheese would, I imagine, be a perfect foil to the intense chocolately sweetness of the brownie batter - but as I had all the ingredients for these blondies to hand, these are the ones I decided to make. I am too lazy to type out the recipe, but I found some much more conscientious blogger here who has already done so! Thanks Joe in Minnesota.

We enjoyed these blondies, but the whole 'swirling' business was a little tricky. The cream cheese mixture was really quite liquid, but the blondie dough was much denser, so the finished effect was less 'swirl' than 'splodge'. The difference in the batters also proved tricky as I think I must have plunged my cake-tester into some cream cheese batter when the allotted time was up. As it was still very sticky I decided that they weren't quite cooked... but 5 minutes later the blondie batter was slightly over-cooked. Maybe it was the extra cooking time, or maybe it was the recipe, but I found the finished items to be much more like cake than blondies, which I would have expected to be more moist and dense. Having said that, I'm being pretty critical - they tasted delicious. The cream cheese did indeed form a marriage made in kitchen-heaven with the sweet cake. I will definitely be trying Nigella's Cream Cheese Brownies based on the success of these.

The Cookie Project - Part 2

Ever since I read this blog post by Kelly-Jane, I haven't been able to stop thinking about these cookies. I could almost say that I've been obsessing about them, but then you might think I was very strange.

I adore dulce de leche, and have long pondered making my own. Martha, true to form, gives complex instructions about simmering condensed milk in a double boiler for 5 hours (yeah yeah yeah...) but I knew that it was possible to simply boil unopened cans of condensed milk to get the same effect. Slightly scary though, don't you think? I was thrilled to come upon this method, as described in a new-favourite blog of mine, Crockpot 365. I must try that some time... but it takes 8 hours and I wanted dulce de leche NOW! So I followed a link from Crockpot365 to the Eagle Brand website, which gave several methods for making it. The one that involved a mere 26 minutes in the microwave seemed the obvious choice, so that's what I did. It worked really well, although I fear that I nuked it for a couple of minutes too long, as it became almost toffee-like as it hardened, and I found myself chewing it off the spoon. I ended up adding a splash of milk to thin it down to the correct consistency. It tastes perfect, but just keep a close eye on it near the end of the microwaving time.

I only made 1 can-worth of dulce de leche, so decided to also halve the recipe for the cookies. Somehow 'only' using 1 and a half sticks of butter didn't seem so terrifyingly unhealthy as the 3 sticks in Martha's recipe. I still have birthday cake in the house from last weekend, so I didn't want to subject myself to the pressure of having to eat lots of cake and cookies! However, it still made 2 dozen cookies... oops!

I had assumed that the cookies would be like shortbread, but in fact they were rather more like pastry - quite flaky. Unfortunately some of mine were a little like puff pastry, and rose up dramatically during the cooking, making them tricky to sandwich together. I'm not sure why this happened, but I had a few mini-explosions as I tried to squish them flat. Because they were so pastry-like, I found that they looked rather dull. Boring really. Even though I had played about with my fun Linzer Cookie Press (hence the cool cut-out shapes on the tops), they looked a bit sad. This is clearly why Martha recommends the sanding sugar topping, something else that had hadn't been bothered to do. I must address my increasing culinary laziness. OK, now I'm only balking at the 5-minute job of sprinkling some sugar... the next thing you know I'll be blogging about buying microwave ready-meals.

After much faffing around I filled half of them with the dulce de leche, and the other half with Nutella (never a bad option) and after a quick dusting with icing sugar they looked fairly presentable. The cookies themselves are slightly bland, but enough sickly filling means that's not too much of a problem. If I made these again I think I wouldn't actually use this recipe at all - I'd make a plain shortbread cookie and sandwich them together with the dulce de leche.

Re-reading Kelly-Jane's blog post, I see that hers look like - and are described as - shortbread cookies. I clearly did something wrong. Ah well. We live and learn! I had intended to send these into work with Rob for his office bake-sale, but as I now learn that the bake-sale has been cancelled, I know a staff-room where these will be appreciated, no matter what they look like...

Favourite Food Photos

I love taking photos, but invariably find myself disappointed with the pictures that I take of food. It's often because I have cooked in the evening, and it's harder to get good photos in artificial light. It's also that, once it's cooked, I just want to get on and EAT the food, not faff about with the camera. But even so, it's frustrating.

However, having just attempted to sort some of my thousands of digital photographs into some kind of order, I have discovered a few food photos that I really like, so thought I'd share:

Beef Wellington. This has become my culinary piece de resistance. I have only ever made it once, and will quite possibly never make it again, a) because buying such a large chunk of fillet steak would be so outrageously expensive in the UK that Rob would have a coronary before he even ate this, and b) this one was so good I'd be terrified that further attempts couldn't live up to it.


Cinnamon and Cardamon Rolls. From 'Falling Cloudberries' by Tessa Kiros. These were delicious - not my usual style of cinnamon buns (I would tend towards the more traditional syrupy sticky style) but they did look particularly beautiful lined up on the baking sheet. Like little snails... but in a nice way!

I have already blogged about my new-found love of making no-knead bread, and this is this weekend's effort - a sun-dried tomato and black olive version. Aside from the wonderful taste of this no-knead loaf, I just adore the cornmeal-flecked brown crackly top. I am always egotistically aglow with pride when I take one of these out of the oven - I feel like a professional baker!


The infamous Funfetti Cake! Yes, it's made from a Pillsbury cake mix; yes, it's chock-full of artificial colourings and flavourings, and is quite honestly way too sweet to eat more than a thin slice... but I still love it, especially the way it looks, fresh from the oven. This was the first time I had used my silicon bundt ring, and was delighted with the shape of this cake too.

From the ridiculous to the sublime - Elisabeth's Great-Aunt's Molasses Crinkle Cookies. This recipe was eagerly passed around the cooking forum - the cookies are wonderful, but with the added glow of knowing that it is a recipe that has been passed down through a friend's family. When I visited Elisabeth I was delighted to see the original recipe card, carefully handwritten by her great-aunt. Truly a little piece of food-history!

Apple and Mint Jelly. This is one of my favourite things to make, jar, and use throughout the year. It is especially tasty with roast lamb. The apples came from Sarah's apple tree, and the mint from her garden - so it was delightfully frugal, as well as being stunningly beautiful!

A campsite supper, eaten in California on our recent trip, and a fine example of how anything can taste amazing when eaten under the stars. Both the mac 'n' cheese and the wine were purchased at our favourite supermarket of all time, Trader Joe's, and cooked and eaten over the campfire, this truly felt like food of the Gods.


And finally, a shot from yesterday - this is Rob's birthday cake. It is a coffee sponge cake, topped with walnuts, made using a Nigel Slater recipe. We cut into it yesterday afternoon, sitting in the sun in the garden, drinking mugs of tea (strange how coffee cake goes so well with tea).

My first 'Tag'

The lovely Sandy has tagged me... being relatively new to the blogging world, I was not really sure what this meant until recently, but I like the concept - it's nice to get to know one's fellow bloggers, and fun to have a challenge. My tag is to describe myself in 6 words... just try it, it's not easy! I asked Rob for some help, but he seemed to sense that it was a loaded question and refused to give me any words.

So, here are mine:

1) happy (a slightly bland word, but settled on after considering content, optimistic, cheerful, positive, relaxed...)

2) independent

3) creative

4) thoughtful

5) humorous (I like to laugh, Rob likes to laugh at me)

Clearly the final one should be 'egotistical'... why do we feel so embarrassed about giving ourselves compliments?! Still, I'll go with a neutral one (but true, 99% of the time):

6) hungry

That was harder than it might seem. It's interesting to describe yourself and then compare it to how others would describe you. For example, I know that many of my forum friends would think I am very 'adventurous', due to our many adventures here in Canada. However, I don't really see myself that way at all - I think I'm pretty UNadventurous in many ways... I'd never partake in any 'extreme' sports (I would rather chew off my own arm than do a bungee jump) and am naturally a real homebody, much preferring to be chilling out at home than being out and about. Still, we have adapted to our circumstances and really made ourselves make the most of our time here, and I'm very pleased that we have done so.

Now, my big problem is that I have no idea who has already been tagged for this task... I have checked several people's blogs and seen that they have already done it. If you are a blogger reading this, please consider yourself tagged by me! If you are not a blogger, have a go at it anyway, in the privacy of your own home, and see what you come up with. Good luck!

Edit - Just noticed that Julie has not done it yet! Please feel free, anyone else...

The Cookie Project - Part 1

Last week I acquired a new cook book - 'Martha Stewart's Cookies'. This book should really come with a warning on the cover, as I defy anyone to pick it up and browse through it and not purchase it. A friend of mine aptly described the luscious photographs that accompany every recipe as 'Food Porn' - I couldn't agree more. I found myself inadvertently mmmmmm-ing and ahhhhhhh-ing with pleasure as I read through the book in its entirety, and in the days since I have found my mind drifting back to this book, mentally planning which tantalising treats were going to be attempted first.


The book is divided into chapters according to the style of cookie. I found myself immediately drawn to the 'Soft and Chewy' section, as this is exactly how I like my cookies to be. My choice of cookie yesterday - my inaugural recipe from the book - was the 'Anise Drops'. This might seem strange to some; there are many much more striking cookies in this book, and many that may seem initially more appealing. However, given my recent experiments with Tortas de Aciete, I felt like continuing with the aniseed theme.

These cookies are so quick and simple. I whipped up a batch while the coffee was brewing, and we found ourselves eating 'just one more' several times in the course of drinking said coffee. They are plain cookies, but elegantly, beautifully so; pale circles with a gently crackled top. The texture is slightly chewy but airy, the perfectly legitimate lovechild of a cake and a macaron.



My admiration for Martha Stewart is great, but if I had one criticism of her, it is that she is just too bloody perfect. Reading through her 'Living' magazine, or watching her daily television show, I am often struck with a depressing sense of my own inadequacies. Why does my house not look hers? Why can I never manage to have fresh flowers from the supermarket in the house, never mind freshly cut from my own immaculate garden? Well, perhaps it's because I have a life in which beautifying my house comes somewhat lower on my list of priorities than cooking, eating, drinking wine and watching television. Actually, cleaning my house comes lower than all those too... Never mind, my point was that while Martha instructs you to transfer this cookie batter to 'a pastry bag fitted with a coupler or a 1/2 inch plain tip (such as an Ateco #806)' and 'pipe 1 3/4 inch rounds onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper', I settled for dolloping teaspoons of the mixture onto the baking sheets. I admire Martha, but I can't be her, and I can live with that. (The mixture was liquid enough that the cookies spread into perfect circles as they cooked anyway!).

My other minor adjustment to the recipe would be to use only a scant teaspoon of the aniseed essence, rather than the full one advised. I just found that the flavour was slightly too overpowering, although strangely it had mellowed a little by this morning (when I accidentally ate one of these cookies for breakfast). Perhaps it was just that my aniseed essence was new, I'd just say go carefully with it as it's very strong.

For those of you yet to succumb to the purchase of this book, here is the incredibly simple recipe:

Anise Drops

1 1/2 cups of plain/all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp aniseed extract

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C).
Mix together flour, baking powder and salt.
Whisk eggs (using an electric mixer/whisk) until fluffy - about 3 minutes - then gradually whisk in sugar until incorporated - about 3 minutes more.
Mix in aniseed extract.
Reduce whisk speed to low and mix in flour mixture.
Plop mixture onto lined baking sheets and cook for 8-9 minutes, until tops crack. You may need to rotate the baking sheets half way through to ensure that they are all cooked evenly. They will remain very pale.
Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool completely.
These will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days.

I am not going to make any rash resolutions about cooking every recipe in this book, but you may have got the hint from the title of this post that I fully intend to continue baking from it - and perhaps tempt you to try too?