After two very very hectic weeks of work and work-related commitments, I’m enjoying the beloved porch at my family home on the farm, near Stratford, Ontario. I kind of have the day to myself; my Dad and husband are installing a new fence for the horses (pictured in part above) and they apparently don’t need my help, so Luna and I are hanging out here. I took my Grandma to the farmers’ market this morning (got myself some wild leeks, asparagus, radishes, summer sausage and kielbasa) and tonight I’ll be hanging with my mom for Mother’s Day (unfortunately she has to work all weekend).

The weekend isn’t 100% work free however. I’m prepping to teach a couple workshops next month, with Akimbo — Beginner and Advanced blogging. I’m very excited about it and a little nervous, but as are my Virgoan tendencies I’ll probably be over prepared, which is never a bad thing. I fully recognize that my own blog has been less than stellar of late, but interestingly enough these workshops have become an opportunity to brush up and research methods to keep blogging creative and interesting. It’s also forcing me to climb even further down the rabbit hole that is WordPress, to learn more about the platform in order for me to baptize a whole new congregation into the WordPress religion.

Finally, of note in the photo above is the distinct lack of barn. The farm is undergoing some very serious hardscaping lately. I mentioned a while back that our beloved, 103-year-old barn came down this spring, and along with that the barn bank was removed, and the two large manure tanks were filled in. The new fence for the horses covers territory it didn’t previously (and was also necessary due to some very risky escapes undertaken by the nags last year). The place is looking quite a bit different, and I’m constantly fretting about what will happen in the future, to this chunk of land that has been in my family for 170 years. This place, this 100-acres, is where my heart truly lies.

Freckles lettuce

My garden, or what’s been planted in it so far, is chugging right along. I’ve got lettuces, spinach, radishes, carrots, beets and some chard and kale in the ground in the backyard beds, but these are mixed in terms of success.

The backyard beds get less sun than the front yard, so this year I tried planting some items I thought would be less picky about sun (last year the beds were installed a bit late in the season so I put some of my extra tomato plants back there, and the only ones to produce fruit were the cherry varieties). The lettuces and spinach are all doing very well, if not a little patchy here and there. The radishes and kale also seem to be enjoying themselves. But the beets, chard and carrots, not so much.

Also a likely factor in the mixed success may be the age of my seed. I have this habit of overbuying seed, and then a few years goes by before I get to use it. Not a good practice. Some types of seeds can remain viable for years but other types are quite sensitive to age, and I was far too busy/lazy to do any germination testing. I also tried to plant less seed so that I didn’t overcrowd things, but it appears that was a bad gamble. But I knew it was a test, to see what would grow in the conditions back there, and so far, it appears those beds will likely be best for salad greens, radishes, and probably they’ll be great for using with a cold frame in the winter (an experiment I’d like to try next fall/winter). Once the leaves are off the trees those beds get good light, so I think the backyard will be great for winter veggies.

My garlic is doing super awesome. Finally this week we’ve had a proper spring drenching, and I can practically hear the leaves coming out on the trees and the grass growing. Same with my garlic — I planted two varieties last fall and they are vastly different in their appearance. I recall planting them in a hurry because the fall was getting away from me (you know, with the wedding and all) and I didn’t mark which was which, but I’m 80% sure that the garlic on the left in the photo above is Music, and the garlic on the right, the much bigger garlic, is Purple Glazer. Even since this photo was taken the larger garlic is dwarfing the smaller one.

I’ve been hardening off my tomato and nasturtium seedlings all week, and I may try to plant a few of them this weekend, using my frost jacket cloches (the ones that hold water). I only have a half dozen of these so I can’t plant everything. My chile and pepper seedlings are unfortunately still tiny, too small to transplant still. I might have to move them outdoors too just so they get the sun they need to jump up.

Our friend Bruce is really the one to get him inspired again — Bruce has been brewing at home ever since he and Youngja moved into their new house last year. Chris gifted a brewing kit to Cass for his best man gift at the wedding last fall, and finally over Family Day weekend they got down to brewing their Pumpkin Spice and Christmas beers (a little out of season but oh well).

This past weekend they made a witbier, which was a hybrid kit and included brewing with grain (rather than concentrate).

I had just happened by chance to come across Love and Olive Oil’s post for spent grain applesauce muffins, which led me to Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Spent Grain Chef blog.

The site has recipes that use the grain while it’s still wet, as well as recipes using the spent grain after it’s been dried. Their spent grain pizza dough recipe looked especially interesting.

So I gave it a try — it was late and I was too lazy to make the pizza dough from scratch so I popped it into my (new!) bread maker and put it on the dough setting (this is the first time I tried this machine’s dough setting). It was overly wet so I had to add extra flour, and I think I should have pulled it from the machine earlier (it was very spongy when I pulled out the machine at the end of the dough cycle, like it had risen too long).

But I divided it up (I’d made a double batch) and wrapped each piece of dough, put one in the fridge and the other in the freezer. On Monday night we had Hawaiian pizza with the dough, and it was awesome!

I used some leftover ham I’d frozen from Easter weekend, and while the pizza was a bit salty, I can’t tell whether it was just the ham (which was salty, for sure) or the crust (the recipe seemed like it had too much salt) or both, but regardless, the crust was beautiful. If I make it again I’ll try it from scratch, and try modifying the salt content.

In the meantime, I’ve dried the remaining spent grain and hope to try those muffins soon. If I can’t drink the beer I might as well make use of the byproducts somehow!

Ever since I met Chris, Korean food has been central in our lives. Youngja’s husband, Bruce has been friends with Chris since university, and Chris has been to South Korea twice to visit them when they were living there (including for their wedding). Later they lived here in our house with Chris for a few years, and were here when I first met him. Now they live in Ottawa and we try to visit them whenever we can.

I had never tried Korean food before I met Chris, always believing it was out-of-this-world spicy and that I’d never be able to handle it. How wrong was I! Chris took my for my first BBQ experience and I was hooked. All the lovely side dishes, each one a flavour explosion, and kimchi — what a glorious form of pickle that can be made innumerable ways.

A few years ago Youngja taught me how to make my own kimchi, as well as jap chae (or chap chae — one thing about Korean food is that there are also innumerable ways to anglicize things). I don’t make it all the time but once in a while I do. The problem with kimchi is how it makes your entire refrigerator stink like garlicky cabbage. Bruce insists it makes the milk taste off. Sometimes I store it in the keg fridge since it doesn’t get opened as often and the beer is in kegs so presumably doesn’t take on the kimchi flavour. Apparently Koreans typically keep separate fridges for their kimchi — something I can totally get behind!

Yesterday I came across Maangchi’s video for making your own gochujang — the spicy fermented hot pepper paste that is a fundamental ingredient for a large number of Korean dishes. The process takes about a day to start and then 2 to 3 months to ferment in a large earthenware jar, outside in the sun. I’m totally intrigued. I’ve been dreaming about it all night. God knows what I’d do with such a huge quantity of the stuff — I assume it lasts a while (I don’t cook Korean food exclusively after all). Anyway, I’m thinking about giving it a try, although I may try to halve or even quarter Maangchi’s recipe. Either that or I need to plan to take a truckload of it to Youngja’s house next time I visit!

I wonder if they carry the earthenware jars at the Korean grocery store down at Bloor and Christie…

There are no shortages out there of recipe apps, especially customized ones for a specific brand. I’ve tried a few of them, but my favourite is called Paprika.

Paprika is available for the iPhone, iPad and Mac (sorry Windows users!). And it uses the cloud to sync across all your devices. Found a great recipe while browsing your RSS feeds? Load it up on Paprika and the next time you’re at the grocery store with your iPhone, voila — look up what ingredients you need to buy! The app lets you download recipes directly into your own database, and many sites such as Epicurious, Martha Stewart and even Canadian Living are already enabled to download directly by the app. Many great food blogs are also optimized for Paprika. For sites that aren’t enabled, you can simply build the recipe directly by copy/pasting the ingredients, directions, yield, etc.

The app allows you to add your own photos or use ones that you download with the recipes, and it allows you to fully customize your recipe categories. You can rank recipes (by star rating or by “favouriting” them) and add your own notes with them as well. It’s also very easy to email a recipe as text with an image to a friend — and, very handy, the email will include the Paprika file as an attachment in case your friend also has Paprika, and wants to import the recipe into their database.

The app also includes features I don’t use very often, such as meal planning and shopping list building, nutritional tracking, as well as a timer feature. You can also scale recipes (such as halving or doubling) and import from a select number of other types of recipe apps. Paprika will keep your device on while you’re viewing a recipe, which is very handy when you need to keep messy hands off the device but still see the instructions for what you’re doing.

A couple months ago I MacGyvered a Griffen CinemaSeat iPad holder I had for the car so that I could also use it on my fridge. I  glued 6 rare earth magnets to the back of it — now it’s perfect for keeping my counter space free of expensive devices!

I was frustrated that I couldn’t easily order an iPad holder that for my fridge in Canada (Belkin makes one but it wasn’t available in Canada when I was shopping), and I wasn’t convinced I could sew one that would leave me confident that the iPad wouldn’t fall out (this one is made of synthetic leather and neoprene). This holder doesn’t get used much unless I’m travelling, so adding the magnets makes it so much more functional. Now I use it all the time. I was using a cookbook stand for the iPad before, but that takes up a lot of space on my limited countertops, so this is a great space-saving solution. I highly recommend it!

By the way, Paprika costs about $20 CAD for the Mac; and $5 each for the iPhone and iPad. It’s totally worth it; and I’m not alone in my opinion — it’s got great ratings on the iTunes App store. Enjoy!

I’m very excited to be starting off this spring with a new set of wheels! I looked online for something used, but I couldn’t quite find what I wanted. And in the end, Canadian Tire had exactly what I was looking for within a very reasonable price range: a multiple-speed cruiser-style bike that let’s me sit upright without leaning over the handles.

I’ve been through the gamut with bikes over the years. I had a bike stolen about once annually for the first five years I lived in Toronto (i.e. five bikes stolen!) — from inside my apartment buildings, from outside where I worked, from outside of school — it was impossible to keep one safe for very long. My insurance company finally said, “we just can’t keep doing this.” They were kind to me for a long time, so I couldn’t really complain.

Locals will remember the big bust of Igor Kenk, now known as Canada’s most prolific bike thief — I suspect most if not all of my former rides were scooped and sold via his shady operation, fronted by a bike repair shop on Queen Street West. Apparently he would pay other thieves good cash for questionably obtained bikes, and when police finally took action against him they raided several garages and warehouses, recovering about 3000 bikes, 450 of which were reclaimed by their original owners, some of them having been without their rides for a decade or two! Sadly, by the time he was finally busted, I had long ago shredded the paperwork of those old bikes and had nothing that I could use to prove that one of them might have been mine.

After bike #5 was taken, I dispensed with replacing my stolen bikes with new ones. Instead, I bought a former coworker’s bike for $50, and it’s been my ride ever since. It’s an old Raleigh mountain bike, and it has served me very well. For many years I biked to work with it. But it has never been a pleasure to ride. I hate how it makes me lean out over the handlebars and how I absorb every bump through my arms. I had added some baskets to it to make it easier to use it for errands such as small grocery runs, but the baskets made it awkwardly balanced and it would often fall over while on its kickstand, and be even more challenging to balance while riding. If you took your hands off the handlebars while stopped, the wheel would spin out to one side. A couple years ago I put a cruiser saddle on it, and while that helped a bit with comfort, the fundamental problems remained — I just don’t enjoy riding it.

But this baby, my new Schwinn, is a lady’s step-through cruiser hybrid (meaning it has multiple speeds for dealing with the odd slope). I put my baskets on it from the Raleigh and it’s perfect! No balance issues here. I took it for a couple of spins to get the seat adjusted to the right height, and it’s so comfortable! No more shock absorption through the arms! Cracks and bumps in the pavement are no big deal anymore. No more unintentional cleavage reveals from leaning too far out with a scoop-necked T-shirt! AWESOME!

I no longer live within reasonable bike distance to work, but I will probably start biking to the subway again which means I can easily take care of a few quick errands on the way home, like grabbing a few groceries here and there, without feeling like I need to take the car. Need something quick from the drugstore? Go for a bike ride! Need to go to the bank? Hop on my two-wheeler! I might even see if we can teach Luna to tag along. Perhaps that’s a little overly ambitious… we shall see!

I also hope to get us a bike rack for the car so I can start taking the bike up to the cottage. I get bored sitting around all the time, and I often think it would be a nice place to go for a ride. Chris is even thinking he might give my old bike a try (he has two of his own bikes in the garage that are very broken down and need a lot of TLC, but he used to be an avid bike commuter until he had a few “door prize” accidents, one very serious). It would be awesome if we can start going for rides together. We won’t commute all the way to work (there are some killer hills on the home-bound route that I’m not willing to negotiate after a long day at the office), but we would likely start biking to the subway together, and hopefully we could start going for weekend rides down at the beach or in the Don Valley. Having a bike rack for the car would also mean we could try to get out of the city now and then for some day trips. I’m very excited about the possibilities!

But before I get too ambitious, I need to de-pretty it a bit. No need to invite any would-be thieves. It’s a shame to take away the shine, but it’s a necessary evil. I’ve heard that bike thefts have dropped significantly in this city ever since Kenk was arrested, but I’m sure there are other enterprising jerks out there all the same. My new wheels are just a bit too shiny right now to leave safely anywhere for any length of time. It was not terribly expensive — it’s just a basic steel frame, no fancy aluminum or anything — but it’s a style of bike that I suspect is fairly desirable. I never had to worry with the Raleigh, it was chipped, grimy, a bit rusted here and there, and well-worn in. I’ll have to put my artistic skills to work to camouflage it.

I’m very excited to be one of the very first recipients of my pal Adria’s newest book, Ecoholic Body! Based on her popular column in NOW magazine, this is the third Canadian book in her series (she also has an Ecoholic US edition). The book will be available in stores across Canada on April 17.

This volume has been years in the making, through some very challenging trials and tribulations in Adria’s life, and it’s a testament to her devotion to the planet and all things sustainable. I plan to settle in here at the cottage this weekend under a cosy blanket and begin to learn about all the scary things out there that we slather on ourselves, that coat our fabrics and persist in our waterways after we flush them down the drain. While I’m no fashionista and my daily beauty routine takes all of about 10 minutes, I know there’s more I could be doing to lesson my footprint and to live a healthier, greener lifestyle when it comes to body care. So… here’s to gettin’ schooled by my very talented friend through her witty writing.

If you want to check her out, Adria will be giving a NOW talk at The Drake Hotel on Monday, April 16, 5:30 p.m. ($10 admission).

Congratulations Adria!

Our love of craft beer has made Canada’s national newspaper! We’re featured on the cover of the Life section of today’s Globe and Mail for our (possibly obsessive) beer run to Madison, Wisconsin last summer, to bring home kegs of New Glarus beer (Belgian Red and Raspberry Tart to be exact) for our wedding last fall. Check out the article here!

New Glarus Belgian Red, in hand, for the toast

Oh the irony that I can’t indulge these days. I’m feeling the loss even more acutely now that the weather is warming up. Hard to believe that it’s been 5 months since I thoroughly enjoyed a few good beers. I’ve had a partial glass and a few sips now and then, but I’ve stuck pretty closely to my rheumatologist’s orders to avoid alcohol. Not sure how well my resolve will hold as the mercury rises though. (For those of you just tuning in, I’m on some pretty hefty drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis that I was diagnosed with last November, and I have to avoid alcohol due to the stress on my liver).

I put these out on the weekend of March 17-18, and the week that followed was insanely warm. I wasn’t terribly surprised that it got quite cold again for a couple days, but I didn’t really know for sure how sensitive to freezing hydrangeas would be. This is the first time I’ve tried them out.

I was so pleased with myself to be the first on my street to update my planters (as in, I didn’t have to wait for my hired gardener to make the rounds and refresh my planters). I guess now I’m the one eating humble pie. Because last night they froze. Hard. They looked sad this morning. They looked downright wretched by tonight.

It was not an inexpensive mistake either. I guess I’ve learned my lesson on this one!

Last Sunday was unbelievably warm. I was finally on the other end of a nasty stomach bug,  and I had hoped to plant my onions, although as of Sunday the ground still had a wee bit of ice under the surface, so they had to wait. Instead I cleaned and reorganized the garage. To be honest, I’ve been spring cleaning around the house since Christmas time.

But the other thing about last Sunday was that my garden was blooming. BLOOMING! On March 11! Snow drops and crocuses abound. By now, a week later, it’s practically weedy with them. Oh and I got my onions (multipliers, shallots and yellow Spanish) planted on Thursday evening. That time change is good for something.

This weekend I hope to get spinach, radishes and lettuce in the ground too. I ordered most of my seeds last weekend and I have some of them already, so I’ll be starting my tomatoes and peppers too (cleaning the garage was in part to find all my starting supplies). I should have started them weeks ago with all this warm weather as I could probably put them out much earlier than the traditional frost free date (May 24). I have some plastic cloches and for the first time this year I also have some frost jackets (these McKenzie brand ones are the cheapest I’ve ever come across at about $6.99 for a 3-pack), which would offer protection if we do indeed get some recurring cool weather. I also have some tunnelling material that I could pull out if I really needed to. The tease that comes with an early and very warm spring is that it could turn on you at any time.

Anyway, with temperatures expected to remain in the high teens and low twenties over the next week, I suspect our ‘Spring’ is going to be ridiculously short. Or rather, perhaps it’s actually been very, very long… it’s Winter that has been MIA.