What We Ate Last Week

We've had a good week for food. 

I came home from our holidays with a rekindled passion for my kitchen which I believe can be attributed to taking three weeks off from cooking, watching multiple episodes of Chopped and Pioneer Woman on Food Network, and reading an old issue of Bon Appetit that they let me take from the Ladybug Cafe in Midland. Not cooking after much cooking is a delight, and cooking after much not cooking is also a delight. I had a wonderful break, and now I am delighting in googling recipes, writing grocery lists, and making big messes in my little kitchen.

I think of myself as a chef-in-progress- cooking for my family is a learning experience. Recipes to me are really more like guidelines and a lot of my meals are experiments. I'll make something and then spend a good portion of the meal talking about how it could be improved, what wasn't quite right, what would make it better. Addison listens graciously, occasionally offers a helpful opinion, and is thankfully not a picky eater. After we're done our meal I diligently write all my notes in one of my many notebooks, and then, if I'm honest, never look at it again.

Here's what we ate last week (and some of my notes):

We started our week with roast chicken and vegetables (peppers, red onions, and nectarines) with boiled new potatoes. I am loving red onions and nectarines right now, and yes, I know nectarines are not a vegetable. My potatoes were a little undercooked and I think next time I will carve the chicken in the kitchen before I serve it - that way I will avoid the potential disappointment of finding out my chicken is undercooked after I've served it.

The next day, I used all the leftover meat from the roast chicken and fried it up with the leftover veggies and some taco seasoning. I have mixed feelings about taco seasoning. On the one hand, its very convenient and tastes good, but on the other hand, it doesn't feel very "cheffy" to me. I feel like if I was a contestant on Chopped and the judges saw me dumping the taco seasoning into my dish, they would be aghast and disgusted. Its also a slightly mysterious mixture. For example, which "spices" are used? What is "hydrolyzed wheat protein"? And why is "yeast extract" necessary? I'm not saying those are bad ingredients, I just don't know what they are. But again, if the taste buds say yes, why say no? (I do not apply this principal to life in general though :p)

inspirational spread from bon appetit

I served my tacos with feta cheese and a fresh tomato and nectarine salsa. Just straight up tomatoes and nectarines (I didn't feel for raw onions and we didn't have any other salsa type ingredients). I use my handy dandy slap-chop and add a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar, honey, and salt and pepper I think it was quite good. My taste buds said yes.

The next day we had chickpea and cashew curry with rice inspired by me forgetting to take the meat out of the freezer, scrounging for ingredients in my kitchen, and googling "chickpea and cashew curry" to make sure it was a thing. This is a skill I learned as a university student. Google is a chef-in-progress's best friend.

I made my curry with lots of butter, onions, garlic, curry powder (same dilemma as the taco seasoning), home canned tomatoes (thanks mom!), a little brown sugar, and some cream. I only recently discovered that you can put cream in curry. It was a good discovery. Addison had an idea to put cubes of cheese on the curry (kind of like paneer only we used monterey jack). It worked quite well! I need to do some more learnin' about curry because I want it to be more jam-packed with flavour next time.

This is the curry as leftovers a few days later. It improved with time because here I ate it with pickled red onions, fresh salsa and cilantro, yoghurt, and cheese. 

inspirational photo from bon appetit

On Thursday we put our hard earned passports to use and took a little drive south of the border to go to McDonald's, check out Trader Joe's, and pick up some books. In that order. Trader Joe's was a half hour extra drive but it was well worth it for two reasons: French Vanilla Ice Cream and Coffee Ice Cream. So delicious. That evening, I tested out a new chocolate chip cookie recipe I found on-line which claims to yield the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies. The recipe delivered. I made them with coarsely chopped dark chocolate AND chocolate chips and then sprinkled the final product with some sea salt. Adding salt to food is pretty ordinary but saying something is salted? Exotic. The ice cream was good, the cookies were good, and we put them together to make ice cream sandwiches with Salted Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies (ah, the importance of branding) and French Vanilla/ Coffee Ice Cream. Yum!

While we're on the subject of cookies, let me take a moment to extol the virtues of the humble ice cream scooper and its capacity to scoop perfectly uniform balls of dough every time. If you never thought of assigning this task to an ice cream scooper before, you're welcome.

Also, I have learned that fresh eggs make better cookies than old eggs. But if you need to use up some old eggs, you might as well hide them in some cookies.

On Saturday, we had my parents over for dinner. I was still on a bit of a taco thing, and I really had it in my heart to make shredded beef tacos. I went to Rio Friendly Meats for some beef and had a nice chat with the lady working there who recommended that I purchase a brisket for its sinewy quality. This was an exciting prospect for me because the only time I've heard of brisket was on the food network and they had to cut it special for me at the back. It felt very cheffy. Yes, cheffy. Its a word now.
I brought home my 5 pounds of sinewy brisket in a beautiful brown paper package, hacked it up, rubbed some cumin and chili powder on it and stuck it in my slow cooker with a bit of water, chicken stock, brown sugar, lime juice, and coffee (I read it on the internet). I put my slow cooker on high because I only had 4 hours to cook it. It turns out brisket needs a very long time at a low slow temperature. My brisket did not shred as expected. This was sad but I told everyone to imagine perfectly tender shredded meat while they ate it which pretty much had the same effect. 

brown paper packages tied up with masking tape

mmmm...a big slab of raw meat

We had our tacos with home-grown lettuce from my parent's garden, fresh tomato-nectarine salsa, shredded monterey jack cheese, plain yoghurt, cilantro, pickled red onions (at the butcher's suggestion) and a watermelon, feta, and mint salad. Addison warmed the tortilla shells on a cast iron pan which made them just a little bit crispy and much more delicious. It was a good meal.

salsa fresca with nectarines

My mom also brought some amazing "Blackberry Cordial" that she had made from the dregs of a batch of jam, which we drank out little wine glasses and felt very Anne of Green Gables. For dessert we had ice cream sandwiches again, because, why not? Usually when we see my parents, they end up cooking for us but I think I should cook for them often (you can hold me to this, mom and dad :) because it turns out they're the ultimate dinner guests. They entertain the kids, bring Blackberry cordial, and are extremely affirming even when I'm telling them to imagine part of the meal. 

The rest of the week was leftovers. Yummy ones. 

Thanks for reading! Hopefully you enjoyed an inside look into what is not necessarily a typical week at the Lacasse house. Scroll down for the recipes/ guidelines on how to make fresh salsa and pickled onions (both of which seem to go well with everything). 

leftover tacos for the last time




Pickled Red Onions (As told to me by the lady behind the counter at Rio Friendly Meats, combined with the recipe inside  Bon Appetit magazine)

Slice one red onion into thin strips and place in a glass container (that has a lid).
Pour white vinegar over top about half way.
Sprinkle in some salt and a spoonful of sugar.
Pour boiling water overtop to full (so that the onions are covered).
Mix it up (I dumped mine into a bigger bowl and then back into the glass container).
Cover and keep in the refrigerator in the liquid for up to two weeks.

Serve with tacos, curry, on a melt, in a sandwich, with cucumbers and dill in a salad, etc.

Salsa Fresca with Nectarines (non spicy)

Finely dice half a white onion, many tomatoes, some cilantro, and a few nectarines.
Mix well with a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, an extremely small squirt of honey, a squeeze of lime juice, and some salt and pepper (all to taste).

Serve with tacos, curry, on an open faced sandwich, with chips or crackers, in an egg and cheese breakfast sandwich, etc.

The Art of Cozinest

cosy or cozy  (ˈkəʊzɪ)
— adj  , ( US ) -sier , -siest , -zier , -ziest
1.	warm and snug
2.	intimate; friendly
	When it comes to indwelling a space, or "making it my own" as it were, coziness is my highest priority, followed closely by order and functionality (at least in theory :p ). I am no design guru, but I'd like to think that I am getting coziness down to an art. Here's a little series detailing the process.

The Years Go Fast but the Days are Slow

i hope i remember these days

these days of quiet busyness

these days of noisy innocence

when i was your captive audience

i hope i remember this time

this time of frantic stillness

these moments of static movements

when you were my precious vocation

                                       

Our Move as told in the second person narrative

Moving house is a journey of a thousand miles (give or take a few) that starts with one step forward and then... two steps back. Deep, yes?

It starts with moving out. You say things like, "It has to get worse to get better, right?" to yourself as you survey the wreckage wondering why do we have so much stuff and how on earth are we going to fit it all into that truck, and no matter how much help you have and how ahead of the game you think you are, there is still going to be a mad scramble at the end to finish all the cleaning (gotta get that damage deposit!) and fit all the last bits and pieces into the car. 

Then, by some miracle, the move out is done and you are on the ferry sipping a coffee while your baby sleeps and your toddler plays, sailing across the Georgia Strait with all your worldly possessions in a U-haul on the lower deck.

You arrive on the mainland, and after a long, hot drive through Vancouver traffic with two crying children and a very near pants-wetting (I won't say whose), you pick up the keys and drive up to your new place. The U-haul vomits its contents into the suite (with a lot of help from your friends) and the dance begins. 

It's a slow dance, no, more like a shuffle or a do-si-do. One step forward, one step back. One step forward, one step back.

 It goes like this: You can't put the crib together until you find the screws, which happen to be in a box near the back of the third bedroom/guestroom/office/storage-for-now, but of course you don't find that bag of screws until after you've already put the crib together using the ones you managed to buy in just four trips to the hardware store. And of course every room in the house has its own similar process. Don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining. Anyone who's moved house can testify that this is just how it is.

Normal life is suspended because tasks like cooking and laundry are out of the question until you've unpacked the box with your frying pan and bought shelves to put those clean towels on. You don't want to be at home because of the mess, but you feel bad going out when there's so much to do, so you just keep dancing. You open boxes, you collapse boxes, you stack boxes, you shuffle boxes from the bedroom, to the hallway, to the "storage". You make messes, you clean up messes, you make more messes, you move the mess to the "storage" until finally the dust starts to settle (Literally. There is a lot of dust) and little moments of order start to emerge out of the chaos. You start to do things you felt you might never do again- like hosting friends for store-bought peach pie or getting your toddler to bed on time.

And finally you're sitting in what is becoming your favorite spot in the house, munching granola and telling the story of your move as if it was just a memory. 

Just don't open the door to the guest room.

New City Resolutions

Before I start, I should clarify that Vancouver is not exactly new to me - I have lived here before. I just need to get that off my chest because I don't want to seem disingenuous to any literalists out there.
That said, I lived here before as a singleton in my early twenties and now I am married and the full-time mama of two small people. I am seeing things through new eyes as it were.
If you're wondering about the bolding, that is just me awarding myself word points. If you're wondering what word points are, that is just something Addison and I award to each other if one of us uses a word (or phrase) well. It doesn't even have to be used well really, maybe its just a cool word or a fun phrase. Sometimes I use a word totally wrong and I give myself points for trying. It doesn't have to be an obscure or fancy word, just the right word. I am generous with word points, especially in awarding them to myself, because I happen to like a lot of words.
Onwards and upwards...
I am drawn back to my blog for the usual reasons- I am making some resolutions. In this case, New City Resolutions. It is a new season in a new city and I am taking the liberty of reinventing myself. Not in any serious ways, just in ephemeral ways. You'll see what I mean when you read the resolutions.

Things I would like to do differently:

1. Write in my blog for the purpose of improving/maintaining my writing skills. And by writing skills I mean using proper grammar and putting the commas in the right places. And also by using cool words and awarding myself word points. And also to improve my photography skills. And also for the fun of having a project. Or maybe I will just write this post. Time will tell.

2. Tidy the kitchen and load the dishwasher at the end of the night and unload it in the morning. That's right, we are living in the lap of luxury- we have a dishwasher.

3. Go running. Be a runner. Be the kind of person who goes for runs. Don't be so sedentary.

4. Walk more. Drive less. Do life in walking distances.

5. Shop local. I feel pretentious saying that because its not really for any ethical reasons (although the ethical reasons are great), I just want the nice streamlined feeling of always buying my meat at the same butcher, my bread at the same bakery, my coffee at the same coffee shop, my fruit at the same market, on the same street in my own neighborhood. There are some who love variety and others who love comfort - I am a creature of comfort.

6. Be streamlined and minimalist. Sometimes I feel that I am two people- one of me accumulates junk, never puts anything away, cuts corners, and is generally cluttered and messy. The other one of me delights in arranging her toddler's Little People Farm toys in a beautiful vignette on his toy shelf every night, carefully stacks her journals and devotionals according to size and colour, loves to get rid of stuff, and relaxes by writing down new lists, schedules, and budgets. I believe that I have the potential to be incredibly organized and I plan on tapping into that potential in this season.

7. I want to take myself (just me and I) out for coffee once a week or so and spend a couple hours editing all my lists, journals, recipes, sermon notes, devotional thoughts and write a 'good copy' into a beautiful journal that I will actually want to keep. I love journals and notebooks and stationary in general, but on the rare occasion that I actually complete a note book I find that it is so messy and scattered, so like my first self, that my second self usually rips off the cover, uncoils the metal binding and throws the rest into a recycling bin. I know what you're wondering- do I recycle the metal binding? The answer is no, I  throw it in the garbage. It is quite wasteful, especially if it is a beautiful notebook.

8.  Be less wasteful. This is a serious one. I've been thinking a lot about waste recently, so much so that I've started to pray that I would develop a "waste conscience". That probably sounds like a strange thing to pray, but I find when I start to notice any character deficiency in my life the best thing I can do is pray about it- otherwise I am burdened with guilt over my powerlessness to change. Praying for a "waste conscience" before a big move is an interesting thing to do- lets just say I was very conscious of waste, thinking "fresh start in Vancouver fresh start in Vancouver" as I tossed half empty bottles of expired lotion into our apartment dumpster. Or were they half full? I guess we'll never know.

9. Cook more creatively. Hone my kitchen skills. Make delicious cookies and iced tea.

10. Go on adventures. Have an Adventure Bag. As in, "Let's go on adventure! I'll grab the bag!"
I probably don't need to explain that an Adventure Bag is a bag that is always packed and ready with essential adventure items.

And those are my resolutions for my life in East Vancouver.
Of course this list is not exhaustive, but its 1:15 am. Enough said.

Project More Colour

Next time I have a little spare cash (and spare time), I think I would like to paint my dining room chairs yellow. Its so cheery, and I love the look of mismatched chairs all painted the same colour.

http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/fifty-recycled-chairs-turned-yellow-design-statement.html

http://www.abeautifulmess.com/2012/12/elsies-.html

cococozy.com

And maybe some frames while I'm at it...

http://www.designmom.com/2012/07/living-with-kids-kirsty-gungor/

That's all.

Thirty Minute Tourists

Today we were hometown tourists for about 30 minutes while we waited to meet our friends in front of the parliament buildings. Isaiah took advantage and did some serious exploring.

Here he is making his way inside- presumably hoping to give those politicians a piece of his mind.

And these are my new sandals:

Sometimes one just has the urge to take a picture and the feet are like "we're ready".