Panaderia Canadiense

I do a light drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon or lime, and a bit of salt.

Fired up the charcoal grill for the first of the season! All veg, all the way.... the real standouts were the romaine hearts with a drizzle of olive oil, the Belgian endive, and the mushrooms soaked in black vinegar with a little hit of liquid Maggi. I’m still reeling a bit from the idea that lettuce stole the show out from under roasted sweet corn.

I’ve been in search of the perfect deli sandwich for the past month or so. I think I found it on Friday! The perfect blend of hot pastrami, sauerkraut, and hot mustard on toasted fresh rye. Epic pickle as well.

Lazy bastard risotto!

Happily, my senses of taste and smell returned, more or less intact, around mid April. I would never have paid that much for a steak I didn’t think I’d be able to taste!

A seat-of-the-pants, holy-crap-it’s-already-8?!? what’s-in-the-fridge meal. I give you... i can’t believe it’s not chicken carbonara! Made with chicken, maple smoked bacon, coffee cream, mushrooms, Vidalia onions sweated in cultured butter, and aaaalll the wrong spices. It definitely was not carbonara, but it was glorious.

Derp. Yes, pink Himalayan salt, which I keep in the cupboard for finishing, is what I used. Not nitrates. I’d completely forgotten the common name for curing salts!

It was all I had in the house that wasn’t fast-flowing iodized all-purpose? 😆 I realised way too late to get to an open grocery that I was out of the coarse sea salt I usually reach for. Although the pink did bring out the natural beauty of the meat a bit better than the usual sea salt, so I consider it a win.

I had some truly obscene steaks gifted to me.... 2-week aged strip loins from the Boucherie Chantecler (yo, Toronto peeps... that place is your *whole paycheque* but it’s so worth it) I rubbed them with fresh cracked pepper and pink salt, then gave them about 2 minutes a side in a screaming hot cast iron. The final dish had mixed wild mushrooms and portobello fried in the beef fat with a bit of butter, Spanish onions, and a red wine finish. On the side were oven-fried potatoes done in a mix of bacon drippings and olive oil, and a spring green salad.

Gluten-free cinnamon swirl with pralined pecans!

I didn’t realize how much I missed this place!!! Please accept my completely obscene miso soup from yesterday’s dinner.

It does look like we're going to be calm right up until DÍa de los Difuntos - the largest workers' union has a national strike called for 30 October. However, on the upside, it won't interfere with the 5th annual International Festival and Competition of Guaguas de Pan, which I'm part of again this year. Last year (my first entry) I placed Bronze in a field of 50 bakeries, and I'm hoping that I can hit Silver or Gold this year. Ummm... It's complicated. The truce is shaky to begin with, and there's no way that the government is going to be able to address hundreds of years of human rights abuses in one set of negotiations. It will hopefully be a start, but the way that the government is trying to cover up the human rights issues even during the uprising (which are serious enough to have prompted the ICC to send investigators for crimes against humanity) isn't a very promising opening move. Everybody is following the situation very closely, and I find myself happy that I've got stock laid in because I truly don't see it remaining peaceful until New Year's.

That's a bit misleading, actually - what's happened is that the Government has agreed to strike Decree 883, which contained not only the gas subsidies that the North American media fixated on, but also the other austerity conditions including cuts to temporary contract workers' salaries (these people are overwhelmingly indigenous), the opening of native lands to mining and gas concession, and a host of other measures that disproportionally hit the most impoverished sectors of the country. The striking of Decree 883 is only the opening of peace talks: it was the basic condition demanded by CONAIE (the indigenous federations) to come to the table. Roads are now partially opened in some areas of the country, although my own city remains largely isolated, but it's still a huge sigh of relief. However, the indigenous leaders have signalled that this is still only the first step - it's not over until everything has been hashed out, and a new deal can be hammered out that doesn't put the majority of the burden of austerity on the backs of those least able to support it.

This thread really makes me appreciate how blessed I am - my first thought, until I noted your locations, was "why don't you just go down to the farms and buy your green beans direct? Time it right and you can get whole cherries." Eugene, I have no idea how or if they're sold in North America, but I'd like to put in a good word for Ecuador's Highland arabicas from Cariamanga, Gonzanamá, Intag, and Vilcabamba. These sectors routinely win gold in both national and international competitions.

Historically, this kind of thing ends in one of two ways: dialogue or deposement. Dogs are immensely popular, cats less so. I have two cats and a dog, and I stocked up on food for them before I ever thought about how the shortages might affect me.