Great Green Gobs

Do you know what this is?

NO, it is not the brain of The Great Gazoo, nor is it a bioweapon.  It is not a golf ball covered in fungi and it is not a meteorite.

I guess you'll just have to read the rest of this post to find out!

????????????????

Do you know what this is?

Or this?

This is a ten year old hooligan hard at work in the kitchen, cutting butter into pastry.  :-)

The kids and I have been watching MasterChef Canada (http://www.ctv.ca/MasterChefCanada.aspx) as of late and the boy is obsessed.  He has been begging to cook a meal for us for the past two weeks, and finally I have relented.  This is the boy who still wipes his mouth on his arm and who has been known to scoop gigantic mounds of Nutella out of the jar with his hand.  All BAD.

BUT, he loves sushi, smoked salmon (he steals it, the piglet!), rare steak and rainbow trout.  He's a mini-gourmand, I suppose.

The boy doesn't want to use a recipe:  "if the Masterchefs can do it, [without a recipe] so can I!"

Ahhh, youthful exuberance.

I tried to explain to Nathanimal that the cooks on Masterchef are professionals.  No dice.  Then I said that they had received culinary training before the show was taped.  No dice.  Then I said, "fine.  You won't cook then."  Why does it always have to turn fugly?

This is what Nath wanted to make for tonight's appetizer:

I wasn't feeling the yolk-stuffed ravioli with sage sauce... and I did not want to make fresh pasta so I convinced him to adapt his menu.  It was hard, but I did it.

And so we are making Jude's Chuck Roast out of The Four-Hour Chef (my new favourite book) by Tim Ferriss; Chinese broccoli from Fanny Farmer; steamed red baby potatoes with fresh dill; sautéed mushrooms in butter; a kale and cabbage salad with dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and a balsamic vinaigrette; and for dessert, Apple Crisp (out of my other favourite - The New Canadian Basics Cookbook) 

Here is Nathaniel posing with his Apple Crisp before it went in the oven

and after it came out:

We served it warm with Vanilla Bean ice cream from President's Choice.  It was delish.  Nath cut and juiced the lemon, and assembled, measured and combined all of the other ingredients.  The only thing he didn't do was cut up ALL of the apples.  I helped him with that.

Here he is cutting up the shallots for his beef.  He is carrying on about how the onions are making him cry, the big baby.

And here is the roast before it went in the oven.  

I want to say that it's a blade roast (we were supposed to use chuck or rump, but the butcher didn't have it).  

Here's the recipe courtesy of Tim Ferriss, in my own words:  

Dump roast in Dutch oven.  Dump in 4 cups of Beef broth, one can of beef consommé, and some chopped onions and/or shallots.  Cover cooker and place in 350 degree oven for 2.5 - 3 hours.  I think that this was a 3 or 4 pound roast and it was perfect at the three hour mark.  Make sure you serve some of the jus with the roast.  So tender and delectable!

Here we are, enjoying the feast:

Because I am NOT a food stylist, this doesn't look so great, and I had already eaten half, but trust me, it was!  In fact, I couldn't believe how good and easy it was to make this meal.  

don't forget the horseradish!

Because N's first dinner party was such a success, his sister Gwenzilla, who was feeling left out, has announced that she too will be cooking with Mumma (roast chicken, edamame, roast potatoes, green beans and little cakes for dessert).

All this writing about food is making me hungry!  Lunch break (chai tea, eggs and salsa on naan).

******************

In other news, I have been sewing up a storm lately.  Today I finished my clamshell quilt:

Oh you can't see it?  That's because there is a giant poodle on top of it!  

Here, this is better:

It measures 48 by 60 inches, for those of you care about these things.  I cut out all of those clamshells by hand, pinned and sewed them together, then quilted it together with fluorescent pink thread.  I made the binding, then sewed that on by hand.  A true labour of love.

Speaking of labours of love, some of you may remember this quilt - Pop Crazy - that I made for my daughter's birthday:

See this post if you're interested in learning more about it.  The short story is that different blocks of the quilt were made by seven ladies across Canada.  I mailed fabric to them and they sent the fabric back sewn up in an improvisational style of their choice.  I made my own blocks, cut and sewed together theirs, added grey to the background and assembled the quilt to my liking.  I quilted it, made binding and sewed it on.  Here's a closeup:

At the end of last week, this arrived in the mail:

What a nice surprise!  Lysa, who is one of the Unscripted ladies, is a fabulous artist.  She drew one of the patches that she made for me, made a wooden base for it and attached a calendar.  What a thoughtful and creative reminder of our quilt collaboration!  Here's the calendar pictured below her block:

My crazy quilting has made her block look a LOT wonkier than it originally did, but I'm good with that.  Oh and the F is for February and not the first letter in my favourite curse word.  :-)  You can find more of Lysa's work at lysaflower.com .   Thank you, Lysa!

Oh yes, and now back to the green blob:

It is an Osage orange, named for its size and "peel" that emits a citrusy aroma.  I thought it looked very springlike -- I am so tired of snow.  I will be writing more about these "oranges" in my next blog post, which will be a review of Lucy Knisely's graphic non-fiction work Relish.

I will leave you with her recipe for chai (I've made it and it's awesome!), which I am addicted to and a music selection from the film Big Night - a wonderful film about cooking, eating and love.

Enjoy!

image from http://www.lucyknisley.com

Soundtrack is Tic Ti, Tic Ta by Claudio Villa

In Praise of Paris and the Graphic Novel

While working on the 3rd floor at Central on Sunday, I noticed that some wise librarian had done a display on Graphic Novels.  Huzzah!  Back in early 2000, I was working as a children's librarian at a branch in Byron.  Graphic novels had just started trickling into the library collection, but I largely ignored them.  A cursory glance at the cover (manga - blechhh!) and then a shove onto the new book shelf.  My anti-gn self was convinced that they were like comic books - meant for angst-ridden teen boys and men suffering from Peter Pan syndrome.  I'm not sure what I had against the form; I think I was being narrow-minded like a woman I know in her late 60's, who still refuses to read or watch Harry Potter (she who shall remain nameless ;-).  Yes, nameless one, you are right and the people across the globe who have purchased the 325 million copies in the series are wrong). 

Over a sandwich at Organic Works Bakery (on Wellington), my uber-talented friend, Brenda, introduced me to French Milk - a nonfiction graphic novel set in France.  Written by a twenty-something young lady who travels to Paris with her mother for six weeks, to celebrate Mom's fiftieth, the novel lauds all the things that I love about France - food, drink, fashion, art and shopping.  I inhaled this book like it was a wheel of brie with sweet red pepper jelly - once I started, there was no stopping.  

 My apologies for poor res.   

I am not going to review this book.  I adored it and obviously, I am recommending it (you can put it on hold at LPL) but my point here is that, post- Milk, I definitely wanted to read more of the genre.  I couldn't believe how much I like FM and wondered whether there were other similar gn's out there.  Maybe it's that I started with nonfiction.  In my eyes, the nonfiction aspect lent the genre more cred and therefore I was willing to give it a shot.  Hey, I'm learning something! Must be good for me!

Brenda also recommended Carnet de Voyage by cartoonist Craig Thompson (he also wrote the fictitious Blankets, a gn on the tantalizing subject of first love).  Voyage is a travelogue that Thompson wrote while he traveled to France, Barcelona and Morocco.  Lots of similarities with French Milk and I really enjoyed his sense of humour and self-deprecating wit.

I began a graphic novel odyssey.  I work at the Central Library on Sundays and the reference desk is adjacent to the Graphic Novel shelf.  I selected a title each week and found myself hooked.  A lot of the books that I've read thus far are health-related (yes, I did consider becoming a physician at one point in my life and sometimes I still do.  I was listening to the CBC last week and they were featuring a piece on a 79 year old BC lady who is about to take the LSAT. What a lady! Maybe there's hope for me yet).  But back to gn's - I like that the authors take a difficult subject (cancer, Alzheimer's, alcoholism, surgery, post-traumatic stress etc.) and employ an unexpected form (the graphic novel) to educate others and express themselves.  I think that the gn is very accessible and is excellent for people who could use an education on a painful or disturbing subject (albeit a quick, humorous one).   Who doesn't like that? To use the marvelous Sir Philip Sidney's words, I believe that the gn both "teaches and delights".

Here is a list of some other titles that I devoured, all of which are available at the library:

Tangles by Sarah Leavitt.  Chronicles the author's mother's Alzheimer's.  Whoa.  Too many apostrophes in that sentence.  This book was poignant, funny and riveting.  Leavitt takes difficult subject matter and turns it on its head.

Mom's Cancer by Brian Fies.  What a horrible title for a book! If you can get beyond this, it's worth it, honest.  What all these novelists do well, besides draw, is employ humour.  Cancer is funny!; well, it is in this book.  Here's an excerpt:  "WHAT LUCK! Mom's so chock-full of malignancy, they can tap her like a Vermont Maple and collect buckets of oozing cancer syrup from almost anywhere!" (accompanied by pic of Mom with arms raised like branches and tapped like a Maple tree). Ha!

The Amazing "True" Story of a Teenage Single Mom by Katherine Arnoldi.  My heart ached for this poor girl initially, but I soon found myself awash in admiration for such a strong spirit.  Raising her daughter singlehandedly with little support, she returns to school, improves her circumstances and begins to really live a meaningful life.

Tina's Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary by Keshni Kashyap and illustrated by Mari Araki.  Can a fifteen year old girl's honours English assignment be her path to enlightenment?  Why, yes it can.

I should mention that there are many more titles in the library collection.  I am about to reread Persepolis (critics have compared Tina's Mouth to it) and another book by the same author, Marjane Satrapi (Chicken with Plums).  One of my neighbours stopped by the reference desk yesterday and I was telling her about this blog and she recommended Plums to me.  So I have placed it on hold.  I am also going to read Stitches.  Imagine a fourteen-year old boy awakening from "routine" vocal cord surgery to find that one of his cords was riddled with cancer, subsequently removed and that he has been basically rendered mute.  I thumbed through this yesterday and it appealed to the doctor in me.

If anyone has a recommendation for a gn that they enjoyed, please comment and let me know.

Thanks for reading.