Roasted rhubarb

I’ve already roasted rhubarb twice this year and it isn’t even quite in season yet here. Buying and eating locally and in season matters to me a lot. And. Without our own rhubarb plant and with its sometimes unreliable appearance at farmers’ markets, I buy it when the co-op has an almost-local handful tucked behind the apples, always leaving some in the sparse display in case a rhubarb-raised and now deprived shopper like myself would be disappointed, and restocking every time we shop until the green-pink stalks are no longer there.

Roasted Rhubarb
More a process than a recipe. Note that strawberries also roast very well, though you can skip the sugar and orange if roasting them sans rhubarb. (Adapted) from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Every Day. Use roasted rhubarb and/or strawberries in galettes, frangipane tarts, oven pancakes, scones, muffins or clafoutis. The leftover liquid is delicious and could be used to make fancy drinks (or drink as is).

500g rhubarb stalks, or however much you have
2 tbsp granulated cane sugar, more or less, to go with quantity of rhubarb
zest of 1/2 an orange, or 1/2 tsp frozen orange zest
a handful (or more!) strawberries, if you have some on hand Optional: juice of an orange, if you have it (I usually don’t). May tend towards mushier with this.

Preheat oven to 400^oF. Wash and chop rhubarb and toss with other ingredients in a baking dish. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until just tender. Let cool completely, then strain off liquid.

Again and anew

Here we are, again and anew. I spread out my seeds today, from back when I had a garden, and tucked a hopeful array into the pots by our new doorstep. The day was grey, with just a hint of light drizzle before we came outside. The maple trees are fluorescing, bright green inflorescences bringing the streets to life. The air is mild now. On our street, the crows and a red squirrel are busy, filling the air with the sound of stiff feathers beating, and an indignant chattering. The stress and frustration of the day seemed to slip away. Seeds in soil, soil on fingers.

Tentative and sure

Another month’s end, and this one feels like stuff is really happening. The year is gathering momentum. The snow has retreated to just a few patches in the shadiest parts of the block. Little maple seedlings are springing up in the grass, hopeful, and I wish I could rescue them all from the mowing I know about and they do not. The willow branches I gathered for their fuzzy catkins are growing roots in their glass jars of water on the bookshelf and I’m anticipating the task of homing them anew, too. Their olive ovate leaves are emerging, both tentative and sure. The cottonwood branches have opened their sticky red buds to unfurl glossy and translucent red-green leaves, and the apple twigs recently rescued from the roadside where the dogs across the street do their business are blossoming in white springtime gaiety. Also right here, I am packing boxes of our belongings while my child spreads other possessions across the floor. A new space, with some improvements, awaits us soon, and a change will be nice. 

Carrot Cake with Cardamom

A bit of a mashup of recipes from favourite books: Marit Hovland’s Bakeland and Simon Bajada’s The New Nordic, with some of my own simplifications and adaptations. 

200g sunflower oil
100g cane sugar
100g rapadura sugar
3 eggs
200g+ grated carrot
200g  AP flour
40g sifted stoneground flour
1+ tsp cardamom
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
50g+ chopped walnuts, & more (75g+) to top
50g+ raisins

Preheat oven to 375º and grease a cake or muffin pan. Whisk flours, spices, salt and leaveners. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs and sugar, whisk in oil, then whisk in carrots. Whisk in dry ingredients, then stir in walnuts and raisins. Scrape into prepared pan, and sprinkle with chopped walnuts. Bake until set and top springs back lightly to touch, or metal skewer comes out clean. Check muffins after 20 minutes. Check cake after 35 minutes. 
With our oven and the glass dish I baked this in, our cake took almost 55 minutes. The raisins around the edges got almost caramelized, which is not for everyone but I enjoyed. I would put more cardamom and raisins next time, and also see if a bit more carrot could work.

A million things

I have a million beautiful things to write about. It turns out that February is one of my favourite months and I get a thrill from everything from the first hints of solar warmth on my skin to a whiff of spring in the air, that particular pastel sky, fuzzy catkins and buds swelling on trees, birds and their songs lacing through the air. Here it is again, a feeling like an eggshell of possibility and inspiration delivered out of winter pro bono.  

And yet, I feel responsible even with the tiny droplets that are my words to speak politically, about a million ugly things. We know that war is suffering. We know we are suffocating our planet with plastic. We knew about climate change a long time ago. We know better than this and yet we keep doing it. Is it that, like toddlers, though we know better we aren’t collectively able to resource the impulse control?

normal gumption

Today, I barely looked at the sky. A cursory glance out the window when opening the curtains this morning, the blue darkness still lingering on the weeks-old hardened snow. A few peeks here and there when I wandered into the living room with a coffee in hand, or water, looking for a handkerchief, putting boots on the child and taking them off again when he tumbled in chattering, at the end of the day. All the in-betweens to speak of were spent under warm blankets in bed. I finished my book for the second time- thank goodness I had impulsively plucked it when we passed through the adult fiction section of the library. I tried my best to nap and banish all traces of illness and to regain my normal gumption. And I feel -a bit- better, and grateful for time spent in horizontal quiet. I glanced at the windows again late in the afternoon while noting the waning light. Pink streaks met my gaze, unexpectedly joyful after the consistent grey that was the day.

Six years ago today, in a different place: The sun has come out today, enough so that it washes over the benches and brick ledges of the courtyard and warms my shoulders and the back of my neck. Everything is bright and hopeful. The ground and trees are washed clean and bare and bleak by winter and are flooded with light. Even the cigarette smoke is almost beautiful, blue twangy clouds in the cold clear air. The chill combined with the beautiful brightness of the streets makes me want a mug of steaming coffee badly. And it makes me glad, like the spring sun is watering the seed of happiness deep inside. 

Potato Gnocchi
Adapted from Bonnie Stern‘s book Friday Night Dinners. Amounts and general directions from the book, though I have taken some liberties with the process.

1 kg russet potatoes (about 4)
1 1/2 c flour
1 tbsp sea salt

Bake potatoes at 400 for an hour or more, until soft. Cut open and let cool enough to handle. Scoop flesh into a bowl (top potato skins with something savoury and broil, to snack on while cooking). Squeeze in salt with your hands, then squeeze in flour 1/2 cup at a time, until you have a slightly sticky dough. Divide in 4, then roll into long thin sausages and cut into short strips (1-2 fingers wide). Roll each strip on the tines of a fork (to create grooves for sauce to cling to). Boil a pot of water with salt and a drizzle of olive oil. Put the gnocchi in, and cook until it floats to the surface, then cook for 2 minutes more. Drain. Serve with sauce (tomato is nice) and broccoli and/or fry in a hot pan with grapeseed oil and a small knob of butter, salt and pepper and garlic, and serve with chopped parsley, a squeeze of lemon and a bit of cheese.

keeping the dark at a cozy distance

The snow out the window is piled deeper than my knees. The fir and cedar boughs are heavy. At night, the snowy mountains softly glow under the blue-black sky. In the cold, the stars glitter fiercely overhead, scintillating red and blue, purple and green, while underfoot the snowflakes on the ground sparkle just as wildly. In the quiet of this sleeping town, I follow whitetail deer tracks down the street. There are bear tracks by my driveway some nights and I am thankful when they no longer appear. The sidewalks tell a story of the passing of coyotes, skunks, raccoons and cats. Falling snow traps the light, keeping the dark at a cozy distance and turning the sky mauve. The scrape of a snowplow and the train’s whistle echo up the empty streets.

New Year Brownies

4 oz good quality chocolate
6 tbsp butter
1 1/4 c sugar
3 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c flour
1/4 c almond flour
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c fresh or frozen cranberries, halved

Preheat oven to 350^o. Butter a 8 or 9” square cake pan. Melt chocolate and butter in double boiler, stirring until smooth. Whisk together sugar, salt and flours, then whisk in eggs and vanilla. Whisk in chocolate mixture, then stir in cranberries. Spread in pan and bake for about 40 minutes, until dry on top and almost firm to the touch. Set pan on rack and cool for at least 15 minutes before cutting into squares.

Rain

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The rain came. I say this first because it feels paramount. The smoke had become ordinary, a strong campfire stench reminder not to spend much time outside this summer. It was a fog that we lived in for so long that the mountains surrounding us became more of an idea than a reality. Rare glimpses when the wind shifted were thrilling and surreal. Then thunderstorms, rain. It rained all night and day. I opened the windows. I breathed in. Everything cooled down. When the mist cleared, I could see the trees on the peaks our city nestles in with exquisite detail. The sky was again a beautiful vault, the drifting clouds blessedly normal. The smells of a regular summer rushed back on the morning updraft: roasting coffee, roses, skunk.

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ripening

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I swam today. The lake is no longer cold, or wasn’t at that beach, where the sand and silt extend in a shallow peninsula. From far out, my feet could still touch bottom and the wavelets between me and the beach were capped with the orange-gold glow of the sun in a smoke filled sky. Up the lake, the mountains and water faded into grey haze. I swam with a friend I hadn’t seen for a full year, when the blueberries were last ripe in the forest, and we chatted as we waded in and paddled around with weightless ease. So pleasant and also unfamiliar after these times, to be filled up by friends to companionably swim and sit on blankets with.

What else? This last month has mostly been hot and smokey. Too much time indoors with a busy child.

However, I really did look out the window late one night to see a skunk, tail flouncing high, amble to the pie-dish bird water. The chickadees have discovered it too, and come to sip and even bathe a little. There are sunflowers and zinnias and cosmos in the garden, and local peaches and cherries in the store.

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June

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Well, I meant to write when the mountain ash and false Solomon’s seal were blooming white in the forest, when the lupines began colouring roadsides purple and pink, when the tiger lilies were just appearing alongside thickets, and when their orange flowers opened. That is to say, I measure June in flowers and the current of time moves on whether I write or not. Now it’s the birch-leaved spirea, pink wintergreen, twinflower. Anticipating marigolds and zinnias in my patio garden.

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Here we are in a (record) heat wave, and I hope the bees and birds are finding the water I’ve been leaving for them. I’ve been amusing myself by imagining skunks also sipping from my pie dish while nosing across the yard at night. Here I am, more than ever realizing how much I need to see the sky and trees outside the window to stay grounded during the day. Anchoring to sky. I get cranky when our house becomes a stuffy cave with daylight seeping through blinds and curtains. Want to pretend climate change is not a concern? Try me, I’m cranky.

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In the evenings I go out and check how my patio garden held up in the day’s scorching. The morning soakings seem to be working. The marigolds and sunflowers are becoming a jungle. There are a few resident earwigs but I think they’re ok. Now, the air is cool enough (27) to open the windows and our neighbour is playing beautiful songs on the piano. My child is sleeping and the rabbits are bedded down, munching hay. I suppose it’s now too late to try to stop the use of fireworks for the holiday tomorrow?

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Well, I meant to write, but it seems I have nothing to say. The days disappear in a crosshatching of tiny projects interspersed with chores and childminding. Hello summer, I’m hopeful for more swimming and less sun. More time barefoot in the garden and less time sandals slapping dusty streets. Let’s see what July brings.

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