Fall joy

Well the last month has been a whirlwind. The main food-related highlight was my visit to Whittamore's farm in Markham, near the Rouge River with Greg, Michelle, and Arthur. They usually have pick-your-own berries, and we went there looking for some late season strawberries and raspberries. Alas, we were too late and the first frost had just happened a few days before, killing off the last crop.

We did, however, race wheelbarrows with a mom and her kid, pick up some pumpkins and amazing honeycrisp apples, and stuff our faces with farmfresh cheese curds, biscuits, rye crackers, and onion jam. Even if you think onion jam sounds gross, you should give it a try. Think caramelized onions with sugar added till they're gooey, and spread across a cracker with some aged cheddar. A-ma-zing.

And now for photos of said adventure...

Pretty pumpkins from the pumpkin patch:

Me, showcasing my amazing picture-ruining talents:
Me and Arthur, mid-wheelbarrow race:
Tiny pioneery-lookin' church on the property:Greg looking sad because the berries are all dead. We actually ate a couple of full-sized-but-still-green strawberries that had been sheltered from the frost by leaves, and they were delicious! I can only imagine that they would have been amazing given the opportunity to ripen.
Leaving Whittamore's:Then we went to Michelle's parents beautiful home in Scarborough, where I rolled in the leaves:Mrs. Hilscher was nice enough to supply us with bundles of her homegrown chard:And then we finally arrived back downtown with all our booty:All in all, a lovely fall foodventure. Up next, butternut squash madness!

For some reason I've been baking like mad the last week. I baked two brownies, mint chocolate cupcakes and a cake of the same (these were a pretty big hit) and then for my friend's birthday today I made a double layer chocolate cake with creamy peanutbutter frosting. The cake and frosting recipe both came out of the Sinfully Vegan cookbook, which has so far not steered me wrong.
I made the two cake pieces last night. Then I cut off the rounded tops and frosted the first half and added chopped dark chocolate and peanuts:
Then I added the top layer and finished frosting. I used a plastic bag with a hole cut in it to frost around the top edge (which in the end was a little much, decoration wise). I covered the top with more chopped chocolate and peanuts and then pressed the remaining chopped peanuts to the sides of the cake. In the end it looked like this:
And damn was it tasty!

Emily

P.S. sorry for the crappy photos. I'll figure out how to take better indoor food photos one of these days. Also my camera lens is kind of dirty and I have nothing to clean it with.

I have been massively out-flogged lately... but I will now break my long silence for pizza and brownies.

I am back in room-mate land again, living with Katie in a lovely, homey uptown apartment whose windows offer a beautiful vantage of fights outside the Fox and Fiddle. I am once again nice and close to my friends and we've had some pretty good dinners and potlucks here in the last couple months.
Tonight Katie, Owen and I made pizza and peanutbutter brownies. Both turned out delicious!

The pizza, on homemade whole wheat crust, had tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, green pepper, artichoke hearts, black olives, hot peppers and caramelized onion. One side with smothered in the "teese" I bought in Portland. Vegan cheese generally sucks a lot but teese is pretty not bad and if you turn up the heat enough it actually melts. It tastes pretty passably like mozzarella. The other half had some goat cheese on it.


The peanut-butter brownie recipe came from the cookbook "Sinfully Vegan" and was dense, chewy chocolately deliciousness. The peanutbutter swirl part is peanutbutter, maple syrup and silken tofu whipped together in the food processor then swirled into the brownie batter with a knife.

Final harvest and this week's farm share

It's getting cold! Darn. Yesterday we decided that it was time to grab all of the remaining veggies out of the garden before it got frosty. Most of these are green tomatoes that haven't had time to mature due to the late start and sadly on-time end to the growing season. This year we tried growing a couple of heirloom varieties in the garden: Costolutu Genovese (the bumpy ones, good for sauce), and some Yellow Perfection (the rounder ones, good for eating fresh). We've also got a few beans and cucumbers left. We're hoping to ripen some of the tomatoes on the windowsill (my mom's idea) and probably just eat the rest green. Ed's aunt Katie says that they're good breaded and fried. Any other suggestions? Also, if anyone in the area wants some green tomatoes, we've got plenty, as you can see. Behold baskets one and two:
And basket three, post-washing:
Finally, it was farm share Friday today, and I took my new cargo bike trailer (pictures to come) to go pick up our share. This week, we've got celery, kale, eggplants, shelling beans, cooking onions, serrano peppers, cauliflower, butternut squash (yay!), raspberries (double yay!), German butterball potatoes, and cherry tomatoes.

Time to go eat!

Packhorses and Prep

Last Friday I was left by my lonesome to pick up the farm share by my variously busy housemates. I decided it was time to see if my new touring bike (a 2009 Jamis Aurora) is up to the task of carrying a big load for a reasonable distance. The results, as you can see, were largely successful.

Here's the steel horsey, freshly returned from her big trip:
These Ortlieb waterproof panniers are my absolute favourite bike touring equipment. They just stink of efficient German quality. The straps are in all the right places, there are just enough pockets for a good amount of organization with a huge inner compartment, and the mounting hardware leaves me speechless. If you're ever wondering if it's worth shelling out the extra coin for them, it absolutely is. Oh man. I'll leave it at that.

A hint at the bounty stored inside...
And a shot of the actual bounty. Behold this week's cornucopia! Watermelon, beets, celery, kale, chard, corn, russet potatoes, roma tomatoes, blue potatoes, and a dozen organic free range eggs.
And as a last word, my best kitchen experiences are always prefaced by prepping everything first. Things go so much smoother if you set out and pre-chop/grate/slice/measure/etc. stuff into bowls before you have to cook it all, and it also appeals to my insane love of organization and containers. Tonight, Ed and I kind of went overboard with prep to make Manjula's cabbage kofta.

By the by - if you haven't yet discovered the pleasure of Manjula's kitchen, go to her website NOW! Every time she opens a recipe video with "Namaste, my name is Manjula" our voices all ring out with "Hello Manjula!". Just try and stop yourself from doing it, I dare you!

Happy cooking, friends!

Taming of the Bar-be-shrew

It's corn season!
As the demise of BBQ-friendly weather looms closer, the 116 Oxfordites have decided to send it off in style.
We boiled some beets, sliced them up and tossed them with olive oil and salt and pepper, and then wrapped them up in foil and let them join some fresh corn on the grill. Serve beets with peppered Ontario goat cheese = pure win.And to usher in the beginning of autumn and the receipt of apples from our farmshare, we made applesauce! Peel n' slice em'...Add some water...Add some brown sugar...Nutmeg, cinnamon, and cayenne (this was an experiment)...Let reduce on high heat...

Turned out kinda thick, and we might have burned it a tiiiiiny bit (poor poor pot), but it is super-amazing when thinned out with some water.
Hope you're all enjoying the fruits of the season, and the beautiful fall weather. I personally can't wait to see more fall produce- squash especially.

The return of the p-flog (picture food web log)

I'm back in Toronto with a new camera, and that means the return of the traditional Mind Grapes entry format where I cook something with my housemates, take pictures of it, and hope that our 3 readers care.

Tonight, we turned this:

Into this:
And this:
Which lead to these happy faces:
I was there too!
For the cucumber soup:

1) Saute a cup of chopped onion in butter/olive oil/margarine/etc.
2) Add 2 cups of veggie broth, 2 cups of diced cucumbers, 1 cup of diced potato, 1 cup of chopped parsley or watercress, salt, pepper, and 1 tbsp of dijon mustard, and cook on medium heat until the potatoes are tender.
3) Remove from heat and use a blender (immersion or otherwise) to puree the mixture. Add water if there's not enough.
4) Put back on low heat and add about 1 cup of cream/milk/soymilk/etc. to taste.

For the seitan stroganoff:

Check out the post-punk kitchen website or Isa Moskowitz' amazing cookbook.

P-flog is back, bitchez!

P.S. You'll notice that the smiling face on the right is new to the p-flog. It's Jessica, one my greatest old friends from yesteryear, and she has just moved to Toronto. More precisely, she has just moved into my house. Let the p-flangels (picture food web log angels) rejoice!

P.P.S. I'm probably taking portmanteauing to a new and undesirable level, so I'll stop now.

Holy balls

It's been a long time since either Em or I posted.

My excuse: Ed's camera, which I was constantly bogarting to take pictures of my creations, broke. When it's fixed, I swear I'll flog more, I swear!

Emily's excuse: For now, we're just going to assume that she sucks. Hah!

As for a summer food update, 116 Oxford has been enjoying the wonderous bounty of community supported agriculture since June. Thanks, Kawartha Ecological Growers! These guys are a collective of 20+ family farms producing a variety of earth-candy (patent pending, patent pending, patent pending), and following ecological growing principles. By buying a share, we support local farmers directly, ensuring they've got an income for the season. In return for our support, these super-friendly folks provide us each week with a buttload of awesome produce, ripped straight out of the ground right before making its way down from the Kawarthas to our greedy mitts. Awesome, no? New food discoveries for me this year include garlic scapes (which I turned into the most garlicky and delicious... and garlicky... pesto evar) and currants (which I'd eaten in jam form before but never fresh- delicious!).

Speaking of the Kawarthas, have you guys heard of Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park? It's a non-operational park, meaning that there're backcountry facilities like composting toilets and banked firepits, but you don't have to pay for a permit! Perfect for thrifty backcountry lovin' folk like me and you. Rightsies?

Anyhow, actual recipe-filled entries are forthcoming, as soon as aforementioned magic-photo-box is operational again. Hope all 3 of you who read this blog are having amazing summer foodventures. Dombot out!

Sammiches: pretty awesome, no?

Sunny Saturday afternoons are pretty much meant to be spent lying in the sun in a park. I made these tasty sammiches for a picnic in the park and they were accompanied by fizzy drinks, delicious dolma and fresh, local strawberries. The bread is seven grain baguette from the bakery 'round the corner. Each section is stuffed with crispy, maple tempeh bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickles and sprouts and condimented with the vegan house mayo from the Fresh cookbook and dijon mustard. Dreeeaammy.

A Recipe story in Two Parts

Part I
My friend Melissa brought this dip to a little dinner-potluck-get-together that I hosted a few weeks ago. Like chumps we all thought it was guacamole. We couldn't have been more wrong! Actually, that's not true. It is a lot like guacamole only made with edamame instead of avocado. Here's the recipe!
Another toss everything in the food processor and out comes pure deliciousness recipe, like our good friend hummus. I've made it twice already and my only advice is make sure you don't add too much onion or it gets a little sharp.Part II
A week or so ago while munching on a banana bread larabar I looked at the ingredients: almonds, dates, unsweetened bananas. It was so simple I immediately decided to start cheaping out and make some variation of them myself.

Recipe:
3 cups pitted dates
3 large ripe bananas
1 cup almonds
1 and 2/3 cups quick cook oats

You'll probably want to chop the dates before you throw them in the food processor. Even with chopping your poor appliance will probably shake violently as it battles the onslaught of gooey date chunks sticking to its blades. So toss the dates and bananas into the food processor and blend until the bananas liquify. They dates will probably still be a little chunky at this point. Add the almonds and turn on again until most of the date and almond chunks are gone. I added about a cup of the oats at this point and blended them in. Then I dumped the whole mixture in a bowl and mixed the rest of the oats in. If it's too liquidy just add more oats.
Spread the mixture on the dehydrator sheets and let the dehydrator do its thang. After about 15 hours I cut the bars up and flipped them over and let them run another 3 hours. After this they were still moist but held together well.

Fiddle dee dah, fiddle dah dee

'Tis the season for asparagus and fiddleheads! So we went to the market, acquired some, and then sauteed them with some oil, salt, garlic n' herb spices, and a dash of lime juice in OUR AWESOME NEW CERAMIC CAST IRON PAN.

Did you get that the first time? I SAID WE GOT AN AWESOME NEW CERAMIC CAST IRON PAN.

Also, I made some salsa using my mom's super-easy delicious recipe.

1. Dice a small onion, put in bowl, sprinkle with a few dashes of sea salt, and stir.
2. Dice two large or three small-medium tomatoes, add to bowl, and stir.
3. Dice a large avocado, add to bowl, and stir.
4. Add juice of one lime and stir.
5. Add cayenne pepper and/or hot sauce of choice to taste, and stir.
6. Let sit in a fridge for about an hour before serving.
7. Forget cilantro.
8. D'oh.

Still freakin' tasty though!

Mangoes! Cashews! Tempeh!

Phew, Dom's been out floggin' me good lately. I try to imagine what amazing food-heights we would reach if we lived together but it's beyond my ken. I think ken was the nerdiest way I could have ended that sentence. It's the kind of word only former players of dungeons and dragons use. Annnnyway, for your enjoyment: mango cashew tempeh.
I had some crappy mangoes bought for cheaps at the farmer's market (I never learn) so I decided to sacrifice one to a cooking experiment.
Experiment succesfull! Delicious hypothesis was supported by all lines of evidence.
Recipe! With my usual approximations of amounts.

1/2 pkg plain tempeh cut into strips
1 mango
1 large clove of garlic
1 cork-sized chunk of ginger
some oil
small dollop agave or maple syrup
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp red chili sauce
cashews

First cut up the mango. I would say for a regular non-crappy farmer's market mango you would slice up half (skin removed) and juice the other half. Mix most of the juice, soy sauce, agave, chili sauce and about half hte garlic and ginger and a maybe about 4 tbsp of water together.

Heat a little oil in a pan on medium high heat along with the little bit of juice you saved. Toss in garlic and ginger and then lay out tempeh strips. When one side has been suitably seared (cast iron rocks the socks off all other pans for searing) flip the strips and while the second side is searing toss in the mango slices and cashews in. When the second side is done turn the heat down pretty low and toss your liquidy portion in. Let this all simmer nicely until you can't possibly wait any longer. Consume.

I tossed this over some soba noodles along with some very lightly stir-fried red cabbage, spinach and broccoli with soy sauce, sesami oil and sesami seeds. The juice forms a delicious sweet crust on the tempeh, the chili sauce, garlic and ginger add some kick and the mango is sweet, delicious chunks of goodness.

Sometimes I wish I had room-mates just for food-sharing purposes. EAting alone is much less fun.

Lucky Pots

To celebrate the first day of hot Spring morning followed by getting caught cycling in a thunderstorm, we had a potluck, with guest chef Tyler. I'm serious, he's a chef! Me n' Ed made some rice wraps, and Tyler made eggplant parmesan.

Today, I decided to try out a recipe for roasted chickpeas that Emily found on the internet here.


They were super delicious, but probably not as crunchy as they should have been. Will leave them in the oven for longer next time. The best thing about this is that it's a quick and delicious way to use up garbanzo beans (roll the r with me). We always use half a can of chickpeas for a curry or something, and then leave it in the fridge and forget about it long enough for a new form of intelligence to establish a colony. Problem solved!

Siobhan, why aren't you blogging yet?

P.S. I think 116 Oxford is going to join an organic farm co-op where you buy a share of the farm (for next to nothing, I might add) and get a share of the harvest every week. Local organic produce, huzzah! Details to come.