Jensen

I built my crepe order by adding organic tomatoes to the smoked salmon crepe (which is served with creme fraiche and chopped scallions). In a word...yum! My dessert crepe was the Belle Helene: pears, chocolate, and topped with ice cream. It was not quite as successful as the savoury crepe with the pears adding texture but no flavour. Of course, that didn't stop me from eating it all... I've since learned that there is a creperie here in Sacto so I'm already trying to figure out ways to get there to try them out! Our last meal in the city was another breakfast, again at Canteen. As Therese mentioned above, we seemed to consistently choose the same menu items but, for this meal, I declared that I didn't care if we ordered the same thing. And so we did ... corned beef hash made with the usual ingredients and topped with three perfectly poached eggs. The corned beef was made in house and so mercifully lacked the shocking pink of "industrial" corned beef. It actually looked like beef and, for the first time in my life, I added just a wee sprinkle of salt to my hash. For me, it was a great end to a fabulous weekend...

Yeah, that's why I dug out this recipe. The original is for "apple cheese cake", essentially a pie made of apple slices in lemon cheese. I think the whole eggs make it thick enough to stand up as a pie filling but while maintaining the richness associated with lemon curd.

I think you got everything but the chicken...steamed in a mild sauce. I've never had that dish before so I don't know the name of it but it was good.

I'm happy to say that I never had a hangover all weekend either. We did take in a LOT of water though... Sunday was another hot day in the city and, because of that, we nixed our plans of museum-hopping via public transit (see Therese's above comment re: the F line journey to the Ferry Building) in favour of a foot tour of Chinatown and more girl stuff (read: shopping). As we strolled down the streets of Chinatown, a man came out of his shop, berating passersby to Come in! Sit down! This isn't a tea house, this is a tea BAR! We're mean here... Of course, we went in and sat down at Vital Tea Leaf's tea bar. The next hour or so was spent tasting many different teas, hearing about their "medicinal" properties, learning how to prepare tea, how to serve it, and more. I ended up buying two types of tea: Lichee Black and Wild Puer. The former should make some incredible iced tea and the latter is a delicious, earthy tea. I've since read reviews that claim the shop is over-priced. However, I do know that the Lichee Black I purchased is of a much higher quality than the Lichee Black in my cupboard. After our tea tasting, we moved on to dim sum at the New Asia Restaurant. What can I say? We ordered far too much food and ate way too much. My measure of a dim sum restaurant is the freshness of their har gow and the New Asia definitely measured up.

I have a very old recipe (my great-grandmother's recipe!) for apple lemon cheese that does set up slightly firmer than traditional lemon curd. I don't know if it will be firm enough for your need but it might be worth a try. The recipe has been adapted for use with Meyer lemons in a North American kitchen; the original recipe used "regular" lemons and castor sugar (and had sliced apples in it but I took those out completely!). I've made it with both berry sugar and regular sugar with good success. It does occur to me that you might be able to make it even thicker by adding one more egg. Might be worth a try... 1 T plus 2 tsp finely grated Meyer lemon zest 1 cup freshly-squeezed Meyer lemon juice 1-1/3 cup sugar 4 large eggs 3/4 cup plus 2 T butter, cut into tablespoon-sized pieces Whisk together zest, lemon juice, sugar, eggs and a pinch of salt in a 2 quart heavy saucepan. Add butter all at once and cook over moderately low heat, whisking constantly, until cheese is thick enough to hold marks of the whisk and the first bubbles appear on the surface. Immediately pour into a bowl or jar, then chill, covered.

I do remember! It was the Rhum Baba. After lunch, we returned to the hotel for yet another attempt at cooling off before dinner. Our reservations for dinner were at Canteen and, after our phenomenal breakfast there on Saturday morning, we were very much looking forward to it. We'd intended to have a cocktail at the Red Room, the lounge attached to the Commodore, but it was late in opening so we wandered down the street to another Joie de Vivre property, the Hotel Rex. The lounge was very hot and so we asked if we might have our cocktails in their restaurant, Café Andrée. As with the staff at the Commodore, the Hotel Rex people were more than happy to accommodate us. We each had a house Cosmopolitan (a "Rex-mopolitan" maybe?) and then headed back up the street for dinner. My entree was halibut served over something that escapes my memory with a green sauce under it and chimichurri sauce (I think) on top. Even if I can't remember the exact details, I do know that it was very tasty. Dinner was accompanied by an icy rosé. My dessert was vanilla souffle. I had to confess that I'd never had souffle before. I can't think of a better introduction to them than the one I had...it was really lovely.

Despite the lack of air conditioning, the temperature wasn't too bad in the MarketBar. Or maybe we were just becoming more and more inured to the heat...whatever! My lunch choice was vitello tonnato and what a good choice it was! The oh-so-finely-sliced and flavourful veal was served on top of levain from Berkeley's Acme Bread and topped with a perfectly balanced sauce. It was accompanied by a cold salad of wax and green beans and halved cherry tomatoes. More importantly, we managed to stave off heat exhaustion with a very chilly bottle of Grüner Veltliner. Dessert for me was a summer pudding. I'd asked the server if it was a traditional summer pudding (i.e., made with bread) but she'd said no. I ordered it anyway and was very pleasantly surprised that it was indeed a real summer pudding. The server was happy to learn the difference (at least I think she was happy to know...). I'm going to tag Therese for her lunch choices...partly because I don't remember them all but mostly because it's time to take another load over to the new house!

The article goes as far north as Duncan and then hits a few spots on the West Coast (Sooke and then out as far as Tofino). It refers to the West Coast as "north of Victoria". Overall, it was a nice article but, to be honest, I found it a little predictable. There just didn't seem to be anything NEW in it. Canadian Living's now-defunct Food magazine covered Sooke Harbour House and the use of local ingredients back in the early 80s and, despite being small, Blue Grouse and Venturi-Schulze Wineries are fairly well-known. If I'm not mistaken, Fairburn Farm has been in the news (at least nationally) due to their fight to save their herd in the wake of BSE.

Breakfast on Saturday morning was a true success. We decided on breakfast at Canteen, the hotel's restaurant. As can be seen on the website, Canteen is very small, containing just four tables and six or seven counter spaces. All of their foods are made on-site, with the exception of things like ketchup/mustard-type condiments and their breads (which are brought in from a bakery). My breakfast order was for "The Chupacabra", a dish of black beans (turtle beans? they were quite small) made with homemade chorizo, topped with grilled peppers, scrambled eggs, and a tomatillo-avocado salsa. It was truly fabulous. I did add a little hot sauce to my plate, not to mask the flavour, but because I like to eat very hot things when the temperatures are high. The joint was jumping but service was prompt and friendly. Therese can tell you all about her breakfast choices...

I started with the fattoush. It was fresh and cool and just the thing to combat the positively Stygian temperatures. (The accompanying Czechvar beer helped in that regard as well.) My small plate consisted of beef kibbeh in a tomato-based sauce. It was very tasty but, as one might expect, served very hot. Probably wasn't the best choice, given the heat, but the flavour was very good nonetheless. The real star of my dinner choices was the Crispy Couscous Tower. Triangular couscous cakes layered with fresh vegetables and a tomato-harissa sauce really hit the spot. The disappointments for the evening were the dessert and the service. Dessert was something called "Slap Yo Mama", chocolate, fruit, and marzipan wrapped in phyllo pastry and baked. It sounded fabulous but the balance of ingredients was off with the chocolate overwhelming everything. Try as we might, we couldn't find any marzipan flavour in the dish. The service was definitely the downer for the evening. It appeared that there were no set tables for any particular server and so we were often left waiting for service. Let's just say communication between servers is definitely not their strongpoint.

My issue came in the mail yesterday and I must confess I was a wee bit offended by the claim that someone from T.O. introduced Victorians to polenta. Puh-lease. Thrifty's has been selling polenta for a gazillion years. More importantly, I can remember the fixings for it being readily available in the 70s at North Douglas Delicatessan (the precursor to the Island's powerhouse food supplier, North Douglas Distributors). But thank god we have someone from the Centre of the Universe to teach us about things like polenta!

After I've been outside working in the garden and/or with the dogs, I come inside and eat a big bowl of kim chi. Yum.

They still do and the quality of their product is still excellent. It looks like their site is very busy at the moment but here is the link to it: Copeland Family Farm They also ship anywhere in the US.

I've seen one episode and enjoyed it. Yes, very much like the Gordon Elliot show but, let's face it, Curtis is much easier on the eye.

Surely working single mothers aren't the only people feeding Doritos and Taco Bell! I agree with your comment about preparation time but would argue that it applies to almost all segments of the population. I suspect it's also due to a desire in our society for instant gratification, rather than any true time constraints. And let's not forget the education issue. How many young people actually know how to cook? Until they learn, they're going to buy the Doritos and Taco Bell because they don't know what to do with the beans and rice. Back to Whole Foods, perhaps they should take a look at Costco's liquor buying guidelines. The beer and wine sections at every Costco have the large suppliers represented (WF's larger farmers and dairy producers) but they also have the products of local microbreweries and smaller vineyards available for purchase (WF's back door supply from local farmers).

By coincidence, my mum just returned from a trip to Hungary; while there, she ate at Gundel and, more pertinent to this conversation, bought me a Gundel cookbook as a prezzie. Sure enough, the recipe for the "Classic Gundel Crepe" is included in the book. If anyone is interested, I'm willing to type it up and PM it.

Well, so that you'll burn your tongue and not taste how horrid it is!

When I was younger, I worked in a chip shop; the potatoes were chipped using a wall-mounted chipper, with the chips falling into a big ass plastic garbage can filled with some sort of solution. Water and some chemical...I have no idea what it was (phosphate, maybe?) but its only purpose was to keep the potatoes white. Oh, and cause asthma attacks...

Sliced onions are fabulous done up as quick pickles. They make a great condiment or are super used in a salad.

By some strange happenstance, I came across this website while looking for something else: site It covers everything from the history of fruit labels to the quest to grow a collection to instructions on the cataloguing of fruit labels. I am gobsmacked (but also a little frightened that my first thought was "Hey! How cool is this?")

I've truly been enjoying your blog, MizD. I swear, you do more in a week than I do in an entire month! What about summer borscht for the beet greens?

You can temper the egg mixture with a wee bit of the pasta water too, just before adding the pasta to the egg bowl.

You're obviously younger than I am...my days of camping without electricity are long past. My new FoodSaver has a "wet" setting on it too.

When I was a kid, my mum would sometimes make Corned Beef and Tomato pie. Family lore has it that, when my grandmother was a young bride, she read a newspaper or magazine article about Bing Crosby. The article contained a recipe that his mother had made for him as a child; whatever that recipe actually was, in my family it became corned beef and tomato pie. Essentially, you make a roux with butter and flour and then add a tin of whole tomatoes (undrained). Break up the tomatoes with the back of a spoon and cook until it's thickened a bit. Then you stir in a tin of corned beef (which you've cubed, of course). The whole lot goes in a pie shell, is topped with more pastry, and is baked in the oven until done. I've been able to find similar recipes on some Australian websites but they use a baking powder dough instead of pie shells and make the little pies in muffin tins. Presumably, you could substitute "real" corned beef for the tinned variety.

You could probably use a Foodsaver to do this too. I'm pretty sure that their bags are safe for boiling.