Beet Chips: Don't Do It

Have you ever reached for a bag of those multi-hued veggie chips and consumed the contents guilt-free--possibly even with a dash of self-righteousness--simply because they are not greasy potato chips? I have.

Porter Airlines hands out single-serving bags of Terra Exotic Vegetable Chips on their flights. Exotic as in taro and yuca, along with the more humdrum beet, parsnip and sweet potato. According to the website, they are 100% natural and each ounce contains a full serving of vegetables. Vegetables way more appealing than their traditional dinner guises. They're not only exotic but beautiful--red, orange and yellow crispy disks, and just like regular potato chips, basically a vehicle to get fat and salt into your mouth.

So why not try making them at home, I say? Said. And regretted.

Don't do it. Forget culinary DIY unprocessed maker hooptedoodle. Some things are better purchased. That's what I learned when I tried to make beet chips tonight based (okay, loosely based) on a googled recipe. Here's why you shouldn't. 

1. It's a mess. Anyone know an easier way of doing this?

2. A bloody disaster. The recipe called for cutting the beets into 1/16th inch slices with a mandoline, which I don't have, and guess what? That thing that kind of looks like a mandoline on a cheese grater won't do the job. The processer sliced, but only made small pieces.
 

3. False promises: reminiscent of the paper-thin shavings of ginger that come with sushi, only tasteless.

4. They looked okay at this point, although the people who loathe beets (everyone but me) weren't happy about the smell.

5. Voilà! Unevenly cooked beet chips--some wet and repulsive, a very few perfectly done, some burned. And I don't have time to stand there plucking each cherished crisp from the oven as it reaches peak done-ness. As the recipe-writer does, apparently.
   

 I say buy them.

Everybody Knows: Inequality

Today I'm participating in Blog Action Day 2014 along with 1500 others writing from more than 100 countries about the topic of inequality.

Inequality is depressing and divisive, 100% bad news. Who wants to read bad news? Why should we? First, to raise awareness about the state of our world and our own communities, which are both damaged when inequality rises. Also, if you need further incentive to read to the end, there's a musical surprise related to today's theme. Stay with me?

Today is also World Food Day, when the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) releases its annual report on what people eat and how it gets produced. Another urgent topic is the Ebola outbreak, which the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" back in August, but governments only began throwing money at in recent weeks, as it became clear that global really means global.

So, food and health care, both necessary to sustain life. What do they have to do with inequality?

Food

Enough food is produced annually to feed everyone on the planet, yet an estimated 805 million are chronically undernourished, according to the FAO's publication The State of Food Insecurity 2014. This is actually an improvement over previous years, but consider: 805 million. That's the equivalent of 2.5 USAs. It's the same as 24 Canadas. Nearly 1 in 7 human beings worldwide. All those people, hungry, with the accompanying misery, anxiety and lost potential. People no different than my children or yours.

Where are those hungry? No surprise, massive inequality mars this map of the world.

Have a look at another interactive map from the FAO. It's a wonderful tool to see how hunger has changed in severity and location over time.

Food insecurity for some households--that is, unequal access to food--is not just a problem in the global south. The rich nations of the world are also food insecure, in some places and for some populations. People continue to rely on food banks, particularly in hard economic times. In my community, a new report called Vital Signs indicates that in 2011-2012, the rate of food-insecure households (definition: those experiencing a shortage of good quality food, or at a risk of a shortage, because of a lack of income) in the greater Peterborough area reached 11.9%, compared with the Ontario average of 7.7%. Peterborough's rate has increased 4.1% since 2007. These are troubling figures.

Fortunately, local groups are taking action--trying to shape food policy and ensure that people have access to nutritious food. Vital Signs notes that 81,650 lbs of produce was harvested from 30 Peterborough community gardens in 2013. For a small city, that's amazing.

Health Care

For the first time, the World Bank has explicitly included the reduction of inequality as one of its goals, labeled as shared prosperity. In a speech in Washington, DC earlier this month, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim (a medical doctor) linked inequality and health care. Kim said:

"As the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa shows, the importance of this objective could not be more clear. The battle against the infection is a fight on many fronts – human lives and health foremost among them. But it is also a fight against inequality. The knowledge and infrastructure to treat the sick and contain the virus exists in high and middle income counties. However, over many years, we have failed to make both accessible to low income people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. So now, thousands of people in these countries are dying because, in the lottery of birth, they were born in the wrong place."

So much has been written about Ebola--the scaremongering media coverage of the few US cases diagnosed so far is itself a gross form of inequality. Three cases against thousands, but the three command intense interest. Sadly, for a lot of people our world amounts to an Us vs. Them proposition. Some social media posts even suggested that aid workers in the Ebola zone should just stay put if they get infected: too bad for them--they risked their lives to help foreigners in faraway places that don't matter.  

This makes me angry. Because we share a common humanity. Every life is equally important. We should care about the desperately ill facing this deadly outbreak, without regard to nationality, and if we have the means to help them--as individuals and as countries--we should. (Doctors Without Borders is doing heroic work, if you're looking for donation options.)

Globalization has gutted national borders in many respects. Countries no longer operate in isolation from one another to the extent they did in the past. And businesses benefit from that--our governments promote the free flow of goods and money--exports and investments. If I can buy fresh flowers in the supermarket that were grown in Colombia, drink coffee from Guatemala, receive telecom service from workers in India, fly to Germany to visit my friend, wear clothes made by women in Bangladesh (and before them Vietnam, Macau, El Salvador, or Mexico, because the textile industry is ultra-mobile), use a computer built with parts from everywhere, then I must also be prepared to extend a hand to the people who live in those places. (Also those who seek to migrate--but that's a topic for another day.) We are connected, and not only by commerce. Think art, literature, food, film, music, social media, family...countless connections.

It's not fair to accept the advantages of globalization and reject responsibility for problems beyond our borders. It's inequitable.

A Musical Interlude

Here, as promised: a song about inequality (and a few other things). Thanks to the great Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows "that the dice are loaded."

Thank you for hanging in there, and please read on if you'd like a few more...

Links, Stats and Studies about Inequality

Oxfam, a key partner of Blog Action Day 2014, published a study in January 2014 showing that the 85 richest people in the world owned wealth equivalent to that held by the poorest HALF of the world's population. Since then, the situation has worsened--now just 67 billionaires own half of the world's wealth. This week, Credit Suisse released its Global Wealth Report 2014 which confirmed the continuing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, even while total global wealth has grown to record heights since the financial crisis. (See The Guardian for an excellent summary.)

DIY Dairy

No, not milking cows. The title refers to do-it-yourself dairy products. I've been wanting to try making yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese and more ever since launching this slo-mo, haphazard Unprocessed Project a year ago. Homemade ricotta cheese, our first dairy experiment, turned out to be ridiculously easy.

I'm not ready to tackle yogurt, which requires both cooking and prolonged, temperature-controlled resting. But soon. Making your own yogurt sounds so hippie-ish, doesn't it? Pity that I was born too late to be a hippie.

Today's kitchen lab featured a less ambitious dairy project: sour cream made with a recipe from The Home Creamery--and, credit where it's due, I found this book through one of my favourite blogs, Obscure Canlit Mama.

The process is simple: mix some buttermilk into light cream. Cover and let stand 24 hours in a warm place. Stir, refrigerate another 24 hours to thicken, and then it's ready...we hope! I'll report back if disaster results. Meanwhile, here is the sour-smelling concoction warming in the cupboard over the heat vent, the only cozy spot in our drafty old house.

I was feeling a sense of accomplishment on the unprocessed food file this afternoon, having made not only the sour cream, but also brownies, hummous, and two kinds of scratch pizza, regular and beet-green. And then my son asked if we had any ranch dressing (for the pizza crust). Which of course we did not. And that was simply one dish too many. I invited him into the kitchen ("step away from the computer"), and the rest is edible history.

Joe's creation

Postscript: Anyone trying to feed a family based on Michael Pollan's 5-ingredient food rules will be defeated by the average supermarket dairy aisle. Most commercial dairy products contain long lists of ingredients, including milk protein concentrate (likely imported, made from milk possibly containing the synthetic growth hormone rBGH, which is banned in Canada but not the U.S.) and additives to extend shelf life, thicken, or emulsify, such as guar gum and carrageenan. Why not duck all that? 

Homemade Ricotta

The course I was teaching ended last week, and my final marks have been submitted. Let summer begin--all three weeks that are left. Already, nights are chilly and a few orange-tinged maples have appeared. Time is short, using it well my challenge.

First, sleep replacement therapy is in order. Then, getting the kids ready for back-to-school, the fifth season of the year. Our most recent high school graduate must be transported far, far away to university in Halifax. We're making a family holiday of it, exploring the Atlantic provinces and a bit of Quebec en route. I've been throwing provincial tourism guides and maps at the kids, trying to get them to pick sightseeing stops and help plan a route, but no luck so far. They're resisting my stealth geography lessons. Unless we make a few reservations soon, we'll be sleeping, all six of us, in the van. Which is more togetherness than anyone can take.

Meanwhile, since Peak Produce (nothing like Peak Oil) coincides with my freer schedule, it's time to re-energize the Unprocessed Project. We've maintained some good habits (tomato sauce, granola and most baked goods made at home from scratch, weekly) and abandoned others (bagels! They take forever to make and the results vary wildly). With a few batches of jam successfully "put up", my next trick will be to preserve pesto, salsa, tomatoes, plums and peaches. I've purchased Bernardin jars and have relied, so far, on recipes from their website.

Canning still feels like a time-warp to me--a routine homemaking chore for my grandmother, whom I watched preserve fruits and vegetables many times--and something I never wanted to do myself: so boring. I imagine the folks at Bernardin sadly charting the canning supply sales slump over the years, watching their clientele die off, and then suddenly . . . locavore/hipster revival. The marketing department, all two of them, scratch their heads: didn't see THAT coming. I wonder how long it will last. Canning is satisfying, but a hell of a lot of work.  

So, reboot. As I type, bread dough is rising, chocolate-chip granola bars are cooling, and fresh ricotta is resting in the fridge, soon to be used in baked ziti. (Incidentally, both the bread and the granola bar recipes come from author Carrie Snyder's blog. I've made a lot of different breads, and this one is unfailing. The granola bars mix up quickly. They don't last long around here.)

ricotta draining and, at left, the whey

DIY ricotta has been a pleasant discovery in the Unprocessed process. It's simple to make fresh, delicious ricotta at home with just a few steps. I found recipes online and ended up using this one from Epicurious but they all call for varying proportions of whole milk, heavy cream, salt and an acid such as lemon juice or vinegar. Simply boil the milk, cream and salt; add lemon juice and lower heat; stir until the mixture curdles (a few minutes); and drain in a colander lined with cheesecloth. That's how ricotta happens.

The first time I made this, the kids were mystified and disgusted by the glop of slop draining in white mesh, which I didn't realize they had never seen before. What IS this, they said, fingering the gauzy fabric. Didn't I feel like a pioneer, explaining cheesecloth to them. Gather around, my children, and imbibe a little Home Ec history with your wholesome unprocessed food. Cheesecloth: you can still get it in the grocery store, so someone must be using it for something.

The recipe says to discard the tangy whey, but it has nutritional value, so why waste it? I found online articles detailing several uses for whey, including in breadmaking. Today I substituted whey for half the water in my bread-in-progress. Was that a wise decision? We'll see.

boiling milk, cream and salt

curds form

okay, eww--make ricotta when there are no witnesses around

finished ricotta mixed with herbs--a filling for stuffed shells or lasagna

   

Preserving Data

No, this post isn't about the willfully blind gutting of the long-form Census by the current Canadian Government (please note: the "H-word", "H-word Administration", or any variation thereof shall not appear in this blog). Nor is this about the Snowden revelations: the outrageous wholesale appropriation of private communications by the NSA and their agents, the informatics industry. Those are rants for another day.  

So I apologize for a possibly misleading title: Preserving Data. I love double meanings, in writing and in life. Here are two examples randomly drawn from my clogged memory for your reading pleasure: one a novel--Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan (I almost admire that double-edged title more than the book, which is good but not his best), and the other a song--God's Comic, by Elvis Costello. In fact, let's invite younger Elvis Costello into the blogspace. Enjoy. (Technical difficulties with the embedded video? Click here for the YouTube link.)

Wow, that was a serious digression.

What I intended to detail is my nascent efforts to preserve local food as we enter the height of summer. The Unprocessed Project bug infects me still in spite of a weak will, time-pressed schedule, and weather too hot for baking.

Last year, I stocked the freezer sporadically with produce from our garden--mostly tomatoes, pesto and zucchini--but the garden is hit or miss, not big enough (or laboured-over enough!) to feed six people. The kids and I picked 35 lbs. of strawberries at a local farm, which took almost no time with all of us picking. For a few days we were rich in strawberries: we ate lots fresh and froze several bags; I also made jam for the first time. The jam was a huge hit. (It contains an appalling amount of sugar, but at least we know what is in it--just sugar and fruit.) I gave away several jars, and the remainder didn't last the year. Neither did the pesto or tomatoes. At the moment, all that is left from last summer is one bag of shredded zucchini that will soon be turned into bread or soup.

Unloved zucchini aside, I realized that if we were serious about this venture, we had to ramp up production. Here's what has been achieved so far this year.

Preserving, data on:
Rhubarb--2 2-cup bags (from the farmer's market--our rhubarb patch is new; we're trying again to grow what everyone else seems to take for granted as an unkillable country plant)

Strawberries--two expeditions (with children) to the wonderful, laid back McLean Berry Farm, where we picked 45 lbs. the first time, and then 5 lbs., resulting in:
               --7 6-cup bags in the freezer (slightly depleted already for smoothies and baking)
               --14 250 ml jars of jam (2 given away, 1 opened)

Raspberries--4 lbs, and later 5+ lbs. (picked by my lovely eldest daughter, who drove up to the farm on her own while I was away last weekend), resulting in:
               --copious fresh berries in yogurt and muffins
               --7 250 ml jars of jam; and
               --3 2-cup bags in the freezer (minus 1 that I had to use to complete the batch of jam)

Beautiful, eh?

I'm hoping these quantities, plus freezing/canning Ontario blueberries, peaches, plums, etc. as they come into season, will fill the larder until next year. I suppose a purist would eat fresh fruit and vegetables only in season and then wait out the winter, drawing on the blah squash, pumpkins and potatoes that can be stored in a cold cellar, rather than "processing" everything in the name of an Unprocessed Project--oh, the irony. Home preserving, however, involves minimal processing. No wonder canning is enjoying a renaissance: recycled containers; local, natural food; control over ingredients (preserves, not preservatives). It's extremely satisfying.

Next will be tomatoes. I've never canned them, although I watched my paternal grandmother "put up" tomatoes many times. We're going to try salsa, crushed tomatoes, and sauce. I use a lot of tomatoes in my cooking and would be thrilled to a) support local farmers by purchasing a bushel or two or their harvest; b) steer clear of produce trucked from afar and grown under the worst possible labour conditions (detailed in Barry Estabrook's Tomatoland, reviewed by the NYT here); and c) avoid consuming bisphenol-A (BPA) that is reported to leach from the white plastic lining of commercially canned goods.

That white lining no doubt represented an advance in its time, aimed at solving the problem of botulism, and now we're going back to simpler ways. How the world turns.        

Growing Food: Then and Now

 

Attempting to grow food, I should say. There are always surprises--thwarted plans, the odd disaster wrought by weather or animals.

This year, self-made disaster looms. In the spring we decided to try something called soil solarization to address the blighted tomatoes of recent years. Tomatoes planted in certain areas of the garden would thrive at first and later wilt. They looked as though they needed more water, but water didn't help. We formed a loose theory (thanks, Google!) that bacteria in the soil were responsible for the blight. Solarization--sealing the earth with clear plastic tarp, allowing bacteria-killing heat to build--would solve the problem, only we must have done it badly. We started late, so the plastic wasn't left in place long enough. Weeds (which we were supposed to remove first, but who knew? I thought they'd suffocate) yellowed deceptively while adapting to their outdoor terrarium, muscling their way toward gaps in the sheeting. It was a big overgrown mess when we finally pulled the plastic away.

Tim wanted to roto-till the weeds into oblivion, but I had just read an article on the excellent Nourish Project site that claimed roto-tilling harms the soil--instead, "lasagna gardening" is the way to go. No problem: all we had to do was cover the dirt with layers of newspaper, compost, straw, and cardboard, which sounded straightforward and eco-friendly. Layers, no digging, materials at hand put to good use. And it goes without saying that I make a mean lasagna, so problem solved, right?

Well, the cardboard and newspapers blew around the yard despite our watering them. The patchwork of flattened boxes, now anchored with fence posts and logs, many decorated with colourful corporate logos, lent a warehouse aesthetic to our patch of paradise. It was, in my mother-in-law's oft-used phrase, a dog's breakfast. Apparently I missed the Part 2 Lasagna Garden post, which contained troubleshooting instructions that would have been handy to have. 

Ultimately, Tim dumped piles of grass clippings over the plot, opting for camouflage. He refrained from outright blaming me, while clearly wishing for a quick gas-powered solution. One of us likes to plant seeds in straight lines using string and sticks and neat labels; one of us can't manage anything more than scattering--guess who is who? After much digging, I was able to clear small strips and plant tomatoes and basil, but most of the garden will lie fallow this year. There will be no squash, corn, sunflowers, or peppers, and the whole is such a mess that I can't bear to post a picture. Maybe later. 

What we have is still going to be great: two small raised beds planted by the kids, 16 tomatoes in the ground, and several more in containers. If no blight strikes, my crap methods will be vindicated.

I meant to post these pictures, taken toward the end of May, before now. 

          Then:

new pear tree, birthday gift for Tim

garlic awakening

child planters--carrots, mesclun, two kinds of beans

beginnings (and resurgence of small strawberry patch on right)

rhubarb I haven't killed yet--yes, you can kill it

future strawberries

various (unlabelled, naturally) tomatoes grown from seed

apple tree

          Now:

Walking by the River on Father's Day

Otonabee River

This photo is slightly fraudulent, because it was taken late last summer, but close enough. Today, walking the dog on the trail that traces the Otonabee River, I forgot to bring a camera. By the way, Otonabee is pronounced uh-TAWN-a-bee. When I first moved here, I said ott-ta-NAW-bee on more than one occasion, offending local ears.

Fun Can-Lit fact for non-Canadian readers: the Otonabee figures heavily in the writing of sisters Catherine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie and their brother Samuel Strickland, English settlers who chronicled life in 19th-century Upper Canada. Parr Traill, a naturalist, catalogued native plants and their uses, among other works. Today, surrounded by the burgeoning trees, shrubs and flowers of June, I wished for a copy of her Canadian Wild Flowers to help me identify some of them.
  
My walk was short, squeezed between garden chores and the production of a fully homemade Father's Day dinner that exceeded all expectations, if I do say so myself.* Our garden/weedriot demands attention, but being so far behind this early in the season somehow makes it easier to take off--escape to the trail once again.

What I experienced while escaping:
--drama overhead--smoky rolling clouds, threatening a return to the morning's rainfall, against a clear blue sky.
--cattails, milkweed, ferns, daisies, devil's paintbrush and apple trees loaded with tiny fruit; a shock of purple-white Iris sprouting in the midst of tall grasses--planted by someone?
--birds darting from tree to tree, so loud that they penetrated my headphones (why the hell was I wearing them, you might well ask).
--a freshly dug garden plot rigged with a pump and water line to the river.
--two turtles, big and little, sunning on a stump jutting from the lagoon by Sawyers Creek Bridge. Given that it's Father's Day, allow me some anthropomorphism here: they were a dad and baby turtle; I feel it.
--an actual dad with two small children carrying miniature fishing rods; they moved toward the bridge in slow motion, a wise strategy for any enterprise involving toddlers and fish hooks. Seeing them called to mind memories of my own slow-mo travels with children (years, gone so quickly!) and I picked up my pace.
--a teenager standing on a paddle boat beneath the bridge, fishing, ignoring all passersby.
--a man standing on a board floating down the river, paddling, admirably balanced.
--bikers, including a woman who stopped to interact with the dog (warning bell in my head: crazed animal lover, possible need to escape from my escape). Thus began a prolonged chat as she walked her bike alongside me, unbidden; mentioned a neighbour, and I nodded in recognition; ranged in her discourse from dog breeds to weather to the threat of grubs to grass; and when finally she inquired about the DOG'S name, I told her, and then offered MINE, and she exclaimed in embarrassment: she had thought I was someone else. I said that I thought she was just extremely friendly (polite lie). She rode off, leaving the dog and me in peace, whereupon I had just enough trail left to think with gratitude about fathers, especially my father and my husband, who have been such a gift in the lives of their children.

*At least, no food complaints were lodged within my earshot, perhaps because the cooking was shared--two kids barbecuing, one kid sauteeing mushrooms and overseeing the spinach and mashed potatoes, the last not cooking exactly, but hanging around trying to steal lemon squares before dinner. They did a great job making the traditional breakfast in bed for their father this morning, too--everyone pitched in.

Why is there antifreeze in my kitchen?

A found poem:

coconut

icing sugar, sugar

water

propylene glycol

salt, sulphites

If I were hearing the words instead of reading them on a food label, I'd feel a pulse of pleasure over the syncopation in icing sugar, sugar (which no doubt has a name--one of those confusing poetic devices involving repeated words). The juxtaposition of sugar and water would recall high school science lab with its beakers full of mystery solutions, or maybe harken further back to the days when mothers handed their kids bottles of sugar water to shut them up. And that final line, with its soft hiss of alliteration: salt, sulphites. A sigh seeded with a suggestion: You, preserved.

Let's skip the over the sulphites and excess sugar and go straight to the propylene glycol. Why is there antifreeze in my kitchen? I only wanted to make a batch of granola. Silly me. I let another (non-label-reading) person do the shopping and this adulterated product landed in the baking drawer. I noticed the label after the fact.

Propylene glycol is the active ingredient in antifreeze and yummy products such as paint, dog food, cosmetics, brake fluid and aircraft de-icer. Which brings us back to antifreeze. Real food advocates decry this additive, and even pop culture has noticed: check out the Dr. Oz website, for example. Regulators appear to believe that propylene glycol is safe at approved levels. It's allowed in North American food processing as a stabilizer, humectant, solvent, and other uses that are difficult to imagine alongside food. The Europeans are the holdouts, as ever: the EU has not given blanket approval, but regulates the use of propylene glycol in food through a specific directive.

This link to a major manufacturer's sales literature might have, but didn't actually, answer my question: why is there antifreeze in the coconut I just used in baking? Here's a short excerpt that describes our additive precisely:

Dow PG USP/EP is a clear, colorless, practically odorless, slightly viscous, water-soluble and hygroscopic liquid. It is synthesized from hydrocarbon raw materials. 

Materials of plant or animal origin, genetically modified organisms, solvents, catalysts, additives or stabilizers are not used in the manufacturing process or added to the final product.

Anybody find a poem in this? 

Cycling Plans

I was going to write about food again, since everyone needs to eat and I have new Unprocessed Project creations to share, but then I saw this gizmo on my way to a much-needed yoga class earlier today. Isn't it lovely?

Wait, what is it?

This, my friends, is a public DIY bike repair stand, newly installed outside the Trent University Athletic Centre. Note the ample free bike parking, too. Anyone who has paid more than her fair share for Trent AC parking tickets at $20 a pop should consider biking.

Throughout May the good folks at Peterborough Moves are running a "transportation competition and campaign" called Workplace Shifting Gears, a challenge to walk, cycle or take public transit instead of driving to work. I signed up last week for my employer, promising to cycle-commute at least twice a week. Except, hmm. That may not have been wise, seeing as a) it's far and hilly--about 25 km; b) my bike is ancient and clunky and still in winter storage; and c) I'm ancient and clunky and still in winter storage. But even if I manage a few shorter trips around town, I can log them on the Shifting Gears site and reap untold physical and mental benefits. 

When we lived in Toronto, I commuted by bike except for the extremely pregnant months. I find it therapeutic to jump from work into rush-hour traffic, dodging all the assholes uptight drivers racing home. In fact, a guy in a black convertible BMW with the top down--a detail that meant he could see me--once clipped my bike as we drove together along a narrow downtown street. His side mirror hit my handlebars. I stayed upright and screamed abuse at him (uncharacteristically: it was the adrenaline screaming). The best Rx for bike/car rage? More yoga, NOW! when it is available to me. But we don't have anything like Toronto traffic here in the hinterlands, and people are supernice, and I'm a safety-conscious rider who signals and everything, so no worries. 

Other than being out of shape. I'll let you know if I totally humiliate myself when I take a test ride this weekend.

Here are a few more shots of the apparatus. Not that I'm handy, but it's a comfort to know that you can use the pump and these other thingies should the need arise. The Shifting Gears initiative also includes free bike repair classes. (Get the themes here? Free. Public. For the good of all.)

B!KE, the non-profit Peterborough Community Cycling Club, has brought us this sublimely blue Fixit station and three others just like it, strategically located around the city. Find more details here. 



Easter Pizza and Other Adventures

Composing a text message on my ancient flip-model phone, I begin to type the word "easter", but the predictive text function offers "exhaustion" in its place. My dumbphone is smarter than I thought. Predictive indeed, given all the scurrying that major family-visiting holidays seem to require no matter how much advance preparation is undertaken. 

Exhaustion goes with Easter like snow and spring? Like worry and motherhood, like fighting and family, like joy that remembers sorrow and makes room for it. Frankly, I'm too exhausted to continue this line of thought, because it was back to work for me today. I dragged myself around, work-fatigue compounded by post-sugar lows. And wine. There was wine.

I really only wanted to share some pictures.

Because two birthdays coincided with the Easter weekend, we had cakes and gifts galore along with Easter baskets for kids too old to believe in the Easter bunny. Best of all, we had genuine, imported, devoted grandparents and uncles. They liven up the place.

The Unprocessed Project is on hiatus. Although dinners, birthday cakes and Easter pizza (below) were all homemade, I shudder to think how much dye, artificial flavouring, preservative and paraffin wax we ingested this weekend. Never mind. One of the things I'm learning is that we're never going to achieve 100% compliance and that insisting on the rules will just alienate everyone (or else drive them to their friends' houses, which I imagine as slacker paradise: open bars offering unlimited chips and pop and violent video games). Choosing unprocessed food most of the time represents improvement over the old (admittedly more convenient) ways. On balance, we're still better off, albeit imperfect.

The cakes were angel food with whipped cream and strawberries, and chocolate with vanilla icing and strawberries. Unfortunately, we've run out of the local berries I picked and froze in volume last summer, so we bought some. The other great lesson (so far) of the Unprocessed Project is the necessity of planning far, far ahead--figuring out realistic quantities and then freezing or canning that much when produce is in season. 

Birthday girl 1 (15!) decorating sister's cake

Tim with Birthday girl 2--suddenly 20!

There was a third cake. My mother makes a candy cake for each child every year. It consists of an assortment of candy bars stuck with copious amounts of tape to an overturned bowl, with a candle on top. Easy to assemble, great fun, and always a hit. I don't know, she never bought any of that crap when I was a kid. Grandmothers don't care about rules.

Now for the Easter pizza, an Italian concoction my great-grandmother and grandmother both made. According to my unscientific Facebook poll, at least ten other cousins and assorted relatives took the cardiac risk of consuming Easter pizza this year. It is basically a pot pie filled with cheese, pepperoni, ham and egg in alternating layers. It looks like this when you are not good at pastry. (Precision isn't my strong suit; throwing the filling together is a breeze, though.)

The other treat we normally make, but did not get to this year, is Easter egg bread. Also Italian, this slightly-sweet twisted ring is, in my opinion, a chore to eat. Not my favourite, but who am I to fight tradition?

My great-grandmother used to shape this into individual portions, one for each child in the family--dolls for the girls and suitcases for the boys, because she had never heard of gender-neutral toys, nor of suitcases as portents of death. We just make the dolls--here's to equal-opportunity bread dolls! These photos are from 2012.

And finally, our new tradition: the Easter Peep, aka Terry, my brother's wonderful partner. He probably doesn't realize that he's signed on for this role in perpetuity. The Easter Bunny is dead to us.

Made/Learned Today

I was a hyper-productive cook today. Here's the tally of unprocessed goodness:

• granola, 1 batch (this amount seems to last us for a week)
• oatmeal-cranberry muffins, 2 dozen (intended 1/2 for freezer, but too many eaten)
• bread, 4 loaves
• granola/chocolate chip bars, 1 tray = 40 squares (1/2 for freezer); turned out perfectly until I accidentally lit a burner underneath the cooling pan, scorching a few. Rescued in time to save most. This recipe came from the Obscure Canlit Mama blog and so did the recipe for bread--both are foolproof. The kids love the granola bars, except when burned by the resident fool. 
• lasagna, 1 pan

This afternoon my daughter the gardener and I went to the Seedy Sunday event in Peterborough, where we learned quite a bit about organic gardening and composting. Turns out we've been doing a few things right--inter-planting basil with tomatoes, for example. Also, I was heartened when the presenter announced, "A messy garden is a healthier garden" than a grid of weedless perfection. Haven't I been saying so all along? Yay for chaos.

We also learned that our compost needs amping up. Hence the $15 carton of red wriggly WORMS that we brought home in the hope of achieving high-test dirt. Believe it or not, these invertebrates require tending. They are to be kept inside until it is warm enough to transfer them to their new home in our compost barrel. They need watering--not too much and not too little--and if they try to escape, the moisture level is not to their liking. They must be fed (eggshells, coffee grounds, fruit peelings). They have to breathe, too, so my daughter drilled holes in the top of the plastic bin that will be their home until spring. It doesn't bear thinking about. This is not my project.

Seeds purchased:

Tomatoes--Mixed Heirloom (many different sizes and colours) and Stupice ("classic red round tomatoes")
Beans--Gold Rush and Strike
Beets--Mixed Colours (to entice beet-hating youngsters)
Carrots--Scarlet Nantes
Greens--Winter Density Romaine Lettuce and Mixed Mesclun

I wish I had recorded more names of the different varieties, even if we couldn't buy them all. The names are full of promise.