Our wedding is right around the corner!! I can hardly believe it! We’re all ready to go; have just been doing some last few things as the countdown begins in earnest. There really isn’t anything major left to do but start carting loads of things up to the cottage, which we intend to do this weekend. I have lots to post about all the fun things we’ve been preparing for the big day, but I want to save it all up to surprise our guests.
In the meantime, how about some cute?!
Bone?
Every day, every morning, every time we walk in the door, this is how she greets us. She wiggles her little bum and her nubby tail and goes and grabs the nearest bone or Kong toy she can find, and then makes circles around us. She started doing it around 7 or 8 months and has been doing it ever since. She also greats all our guests this way. Such a happy dog!
I’m a beaten and battered locavore foodie tonight. As is my Virgoan tendency, I bit off more than I could chew. With Chris away on his San Diego bachelor party adventure (so jealous!) I decided to make the most of some new equipment I invested in recently, and get down to business canning.
First on the list was the beets I’ve been neglecting in the garden all summer. This is what happens when you neglect beets for months and months. They mutate into hideous beasts. Those suckers weighed 2 lbs each!!
Overgrown beets
One of the pieces of equipment I recently bought is an outdoor propane burner meant for canning. I had actually bought one from Bass Pro Shop a few weeks ago designed for fish frying, but when I found this one at my local Fortinos grocery store of all places this week (on sale!), I had to buy it (sorry — I put it away and forgot to take a photo but this is the one, by Aurora). It’s incredibly sturdy and much better value than the one from Bass Pro. It was tucked away among all the canning supplies and the bushels of tomatoes at Fortinos, and it performed beautifully — even after a thunderstorm swept through and I had to run for cover and leave it out in the rain.
The first thing I tested on the burner was running the canning bath for a bunch of the beets. I often have problems getting the seals to go down on wide mouth jars, but processing them on the propane burner seemed to help with that. Maybe it was because I wasn’t fudging with the heat/burner to ensure that my pot didn’t boil over (I used my biggest stock pot, 16L, outside on the burner).
Pickled Detroit Goldens and Detroit Reds
Next, was to tackle the bushel of tomatoes I bought last night. Last year I turned a bushel of tomatoes into sauce, but for some reason this year the task seemed monumental, but only after I got started and realized just how insane this decision was. Next time — must invite friends and get bigger pots.
With the sauce though, I wanted to try out the nifty new 22 QT Mirro Pressure Canner that Chris bought me (he’s such an enabler. I adore him!). The canner has three pressure control valves, each designed to hold pressure at 5, 10 and 15 PSI. Problem was that the diagram in the manual is a joke, and the valves aren’t labeled. I decided to wing it and chose the middle size to hopefully achieve the 10 PSI I needed.
So… the theory is that, for tomatoes anyway, the pressure canner reduces the amount of processing time required. Instead of 40 mins in a hot water bath you can do them for 15 mins in the pressure canner at 10 PSI (for 1L jars). Problem is that you have to let the pressure reduce after that 15 mins before you can open the canner, which takes 45 mins to an hour! And the canner only holds 5 1L jars, which was about a third of what I needed to process. Because of that aforementioned thunderstorm, I finished most of the sauce canning indoors but I did try out the pressure canner (scary at first!) and I’m pretty happy with it, despite the fact that it doesn’t really speed things up for me in the way I’d thought. I might have to make a video sometime to show how to use it (I was stumped for about an hour, trying to comprehend the horrible manual; and there don’t seem to be any ‘how to’ videos of this model online). I love the idea of being able to can low acid items like my stocks — it will save room in the freezer and save on having to microwave or wait for them to thaw. I also love that you can stack pint jars in it, so that makes processing quicker for the smaller types of jars anyway. And perhaps knowing that I can process a limited amount of tomatoes in it, but faster, will lead to me not buying such ridiculous amounts of tomatoes in the first place. It would be far less stressful on my constitution if I just did things in moderation. But then maybe I wouldn’t be me. Ha!
17L of tomato sauce!
Now for the really crazy part? What I processed today doesn’t represent any of the tomatoes in my garden. Those are late this year and just barely starting to ripen. But remember how I made my garden bigger this year? Yeah. I’m in trouble. There’s this little thing called a wedding coming up. What was I thinking?!
I’m going to admit right now that I’ve shamelessly copied Amanda’s post by adding this video to my own blog, but it literally brought a hitch to my throat and a tear to my eye. Growing up on a small farm that’s been in my family since it was settled, and for which the future is uncertain, this gorgeous little animation hit a visceral note for me.
I know I know it’s for a giant fast food chain, but still. Well done. And who doesn’t adore Willie Nelson?
Several weeks ago at work I coordinated a little film shoot in collaboration with the CBC as part of their 75th anniversary celebrations, to bring together a group of artists at OCAD to remember the influence of the late, great Mr. Dressup (Ernie Coombs) on us all as kids. The spot turned out beautifully (and yay! I don’t sound like a blathering idiot!).
I don’t normally bring in my work life to my blog here, but this is one of those lovely moments that I had to share. This is why I do the work that I do. I must keep reminding myself. Enjoy!
A couple weeks ago our friends Cass and Liz and Chris and I all piled into our Jetta wagon and headed on an epic road trip to Madison Wisconsin. Why Madison you say? Well. Wisconsin only has some of the best craft beer in the world. And we had a plan to get our hands on it.
Farmers' Market around the capitol building
Gorgeous garlic
Said beer is from a special brewery that will, for now, go unnamed. That will be saved for another post for in say, a month from now. After a certain wedding takes place. You see, this beer is so famous among true beer geeks that we need to keep it top secret until after the fact. Or risk crashers. Seriously.
Let me also add that our little party of four went through some harrowing experiences to get said beer. And that I’m lucky to be sitting here bragging about it. Again. A story for about a month from now.
Sunflowers for sale
So back to Madison. Besides it’s amazing beer, it’s also a beautiful city — sitting on an isthmus between two lakes. The city is centred around its stately capitol building, which is itself a thing of beauty. One of the most amazing things we experienced was the Saturday morning farmers’ market, which sets up around the edges of the capital square, with what I estimate was a few hundred vendors — that’s right, a few hundred. There was a lot of repetition among vendors but clearly, they get the business to support it. And everyone walks around the square in the same, clockwise direction, as the sidewalk is pretty tight once you have the vendors in there. This was the most impressive non-permanent farmers’ market I’ve ever seen.
Community veg garden in the square
I want to find me some of these jars
But sadly, we couldn’t really buy much of anything, because we weren’t equipped to cook it. We did have some cheese curds of course though. And we ogled everything! Wisconsin is also known as the cheese state, and we sampled so much cheese. Every restaurant and pub serves local cheese. And beer-battered deep fried cheese curds. Chris even had a burger with them on it (thinking when he ordered it that it was just topped with regular, unfried cheese curds). And also sadly, we cannot bring cheese or produce across the border so we had to leave it all behind. So eat we did, but shop at the farmers’ market we didn’t.
Great Dane taps
Great Dane casks
Taps at Brasserie V
And maybe because there is so much cheese (and so much good beer?) the city is full of very active people. Runners, walkers, and cyclists. Toronto could learn a thing or two about being a bike friendly city from Madison. They had just gotten their own version of the bike rental system (like Toronto and Montreal’s Bixi system), only launched a few days before we got there but already well in use. So many streets have bike-only lanes. Everyone bikes everywhere.
At Brasserie V; I don't even remember what this was (it had been a long full day of drinking by then) and I don't think the name on the glass is right, but it was divine.
Chris with his sampler at Great Dane
Now Madison wasn’t all perfect — there is a lot of labour unrest in Wisconsin and there were a few protests, all very polite, going on. And a lot of homeless people sleeping in the very well-manicured gardens and on benches all around the capitol building. It was often disturbing to happen across groups of homeless (mostly men) lying about in places that I think in Toronto they would have been run out of. I’m used to seeing homeless people — Toronto has plenty — but it was as if there were no shelters for them to go to at night in Madison. In Toronto at night, I think homeless people tend to either find a shelter or go to rough encampments or other places that tend to be out of sight. I don’t really know for sure but it seemed different somehow, and it made me sad to see.
Succulents for sale at the market
We did a lot of drinking of course, checking out places like The Old Fashioned, Great Dane Brewpub, Brasserie V (where the bartender was unbelievably kind, buying us drinks after waiting 20 mins in the sweltering heat for a cab — just a note that cabs are not easy to obtain in Madison, likely because most people bike!), Alchemy, Brickhouse BBQ, and The Cooper’s Tavern. We had great food at most of these places, as well as at Graze, which specializes in locally produced food. I didn’t find their atmosphere terribly spectacular but their menu was incredible. I know Cass is planning a full review for either Free Our Beer or The Bar Towel, so I’ll let him tell the story of the beer and rate the pubs. I liked them all.
Inside the capitol building
Inside the capitol building
It was blisteringly hot there, as much as it was here, and I was about ready to die of dehydration when we happened upon a street festival late on the Saturday, where — yes — they had a mobile beer trailer serving right from the side of the vehicle. By this point however I opted for a water break.
We also did some driving in the countryside, but this is where I have to leave the story and tell the rest of the tale another time. In the meantime, enjoy some photos (there are some hints in the photos of the story yet to be told)!
One of our home reno projects this summer was to finally, finally paint our bedroom. We did that in May, and there’s still the odd little finishing touch to be done. A few weeks ago Chris got the trim on the windows finished and I painted it (we haven’t had trim on the bedroom windows since I’ve lived here, over 4 years). The radiators still need new trim and we need to replace one of the switches for the light/ceiling fan combo. And there’s no art on the walls yet either. But… I finished a pillow!
New pillow for the bedroom
This is the Mosaic Floor Pillow quilt design by Elizabeth Hartman. I made one of these already for Adria’s birthday but this time I followed the pattern a little more closely on the assembly of the patchwork. It worked out very well — I’m very pleased. There are a whole bunch of fabrics used from all over the place so I’m not even going to try to sit down and figure them all out. I know some people really love to track that stuff but I’m less concerned about that.
The smaller pillows are ones I got at Winners for a steal, and they match the room really well, and now I feel like the bed at least is complete. We have an enormous (and so comfortable) king-sized bed, and now with these three pillows on it, it looks a little less enormous.
Last week after getting home from a weekend at the cottage I inspected the beet patch to see how things are going. Low and behold I had gargantuan Chioggias coming out of my ears. I should have known, as they are the earliest of the beets I like to grow. I also have some Detroit Reds and some Detroit Goldens on the go. I’m afraid to see how big they are. Between the very gregarious patch of Rainbow Swiss Chard I have going (I am so sick of chard!!) and the beets, I can barely keep up.
Pickled Chioggia Beets
Chioggias (aka candy cane beets) are a little unconventional for pickling as they tend to bleed out all their lovely candy cane striping, but I love their unusual look all the same. As you can see each jar is a little different depending on which jar got the beets with more red in them.
I’ll probably can some more pickled beets with the Detroit Reds to get some more traditional looking ones. I eat these things like candy. Its the one pickle I make that I can be sure I will always eat tons of. I might try pickling some of the Goldens too — I’m curious how they’ll look in the jar.
Over the last week we’ve finally had a decent dose of rain. It’s not enough — we need a lot more — but I won’t complain. Today was a very misty one, and everything is pleasantly coated with little drops of dew.
Soaked Smoke Bush
It’s incredibly sticky outside now though, because while we’ve gotten some rain, the heat is still hanging around. Not like it was last week though. I’ll take the rain and a little humidity over 38 degrees C and a lot of humidity any day of the week. I’m just pleased that my rain barrels have refilled again. I’m not sure what the official rainless stretch was but it was easily a month if not more.
We’re mostly all finished with the wedding planning — in fact, I had pretty much everything figured out for it around the end of June. Now it’s simply a matter of booking everything, paying deposits, etc. It’s been going very smoothly and overall it’s been a pretty chill experience.
One of the things I’m super excited about is being the very first letterpress customer for Amanda Keenan of Silverplate Press! I know Amanda through my job at OCAD U and have had the pleasure of working with her there while she was our graphic design student monitor. She has since graduated and over the last year or so been working towards establishing her letterpress studio. She has two letterpresses — a wee small one and a Vandercook, which can handle larger jobs — I think up to 20 x 30 inches (although I’m not sure — she’s the expert!).
She’s been chronicling the development of the studio via her blog, and just last week, with the help of her husband Justin, posted an instructional video about how to remove rollers from the Vandercook. From what I know about letterpress, which isn’t a lot, there just aren’t a lot of experts around anymore that know how to work these babies.
I’m pretty excited about what’s to come off the press, and Amanda is pretty psyched too! It’s a huge pleasure for me to be able to help her get the business off the ground — both Chris and I are thrilled about being able to showcase Amanda’s great design skills in the very special art (and design) form of letterpress, as part of the lead up to our wedding. For a sneak peek at our design, click here. Bring on the ink!
This video was sent to my work Twitter account by the good people at Toronto Standard… I’m not entirely sure why they sent it there, but it’s one of those wonderful coincidences, because this video is far more relevant to me personally. This is a lovely profile of Toronto baker Jeff Connell, of Woodlot. I’ve never been to the restaurant, but obviously I have to go check them out soon. Their bread looks gorgeous.
Oh. And now more than ever I want to build me a wood burning oven.
