If you are from Canada or been on social media lately, you cannot help but know that we are in a deep freeze right now. You can still buy some local produce like beets, carrots and potatoes but that’s pretty much it. We are well stocked with beef, pork and chicken right now but our fish and seafood supplies are dismal ,not just in our freezer but in the grocery store freezers as well.

Portugal

Isla Mujeres

Prince Edward Island

Fresh fish and seafood is one of the many reasons why D and I love to travel. Last year In Portugal, Isla Mujeres, Mexico and Prince Edward Island we ate fresh fish at as many meals as possible.

Tuscany

This year we have booked Tuscany. On our last journey there, we we overjoyed with the fish.

I recently read The Little French Bistro by Nina George. It was a great read but I was especially fascinated by this excerpt:

“He had lectured Marianne on the importance of food and its effects on the soul, even though he knew that she barely understood a word. He talked about how he loved to shop and how true gastronomy began with hunting down the freshest, choicest produce. He spent his days off in low season visiting distilleries and mussel farms, or strolling along the Avon and Belen rivers or around the Bay of Morbidhan to find patient retired anglers reeling in wild fish.  These men still understood the rhythms of Brittany’s coastline. They knew that they had to be there at the right time, according to the dictates of moon and tides. High and low tide arrived a little earlier every day-two to four minutes earlier-and so they needed to be as swift and stealthy as foxes to catch the best moment for the fish to bite.”

Chapter 15, page 91

Boy do we have a lot to learn about fish!

Kath’s quote:“Fish, to taste right, must swim three times -in water, in butter, and in wine.” –Polish proverb

Love never fails.

The cold grip continues in Manitoba and when we say that we are colder than Mars we are not just using a figure of speech. Overnight temperatures (with the wind chill) have been in the -50 range. Because I work from home I am one of the fortunate ones. It is simply treacherous for our eldest who uses a motorized wheelchair to go outside. My beautiful grand-babies can’t get to school because of frozen vehicles (their Daddy, our son has been walking to work). Our 2nd son (son in law) works on the front lines at Siloam Mission and I can only imagine what they are trying to cope in this weather crisis.

Anyhoo…I was trying to decide on a stew or soup that would keep us warm tonight and I came upon a top ten list of foods that, for various reasons, will keep you warm: cinnamon, dried fruits, eggs, ginger, honey, pepper, saffron, sesame seeds, turmeric and hot soups. The latter being an obvious. This didn’t sound like a soup concoction but it did sound like a spice cookie recipe! I started with a recipe from the Middle East and modified it to incorporate more of the list. It already covered off cinnamon, dried fruits, eggs and ginger. I added honey, pepper and sesame seeds and I swapped  whole what flour for white flour, vanilla whiskey for brandy and raisins for currants.I couldn’t find a way to incorporate turmeric or saffron. Drat.

The result?

An unusual tasting but satisfying cookie.

Love never fails.

I love to read and I love to cook. My family knows this best and that is why my eldest gave me Outlander Kitchen which I wrote about last week. At any given time I will have a work of fiction and another of non-fiction, in addition to what I have going on my Kindle and what I am reading for blog research.

I typically borrow books from Sister #2 who holds an unbelievable library or my eldest who’s book collection is equally fine but focused towards literature that helped her attain her Masters Degree in Disability Studies. In fact her thesis included excerpts from various fiction and how she related to it in light of her personal disability. The thesis is absolutely fascinating, but I’m her Mom, so I guess that makes me biased. If you would like a copy to ready for yourself, just let me know and I can send it to you.

I also borrow extensively from the library. D and I sometimes go on book dates. We will spend a cozy evening in a bookstore and while I am there, I will make a note about new authors and titles I would like to read and then come home, go online and request them from the library. A good friend of mine who happened to own a bookstore asked me to please not advertise this habit of mine, so that booksellers (who already have a tough go of it), could make some money. I do also purchase second books on Amazon.

When I am in the midst of a good read, I use a bookmark to keep my place but I also turn up the bottom corner of a page that includes a particular culinary reference. I go back through the book once I am finished and make note of these references. Sometimes you see them below as one of “Kath’s Quotes”.

I have never been invited to a book club but I think that I would greatly enjoy one, not just to hear other perspectives but to imbibe with some other bookies. Here is one such book that is extremely popular among the book-club set. It is called The Book Lover’s Cookbook by Shauna Kennedy Wenger and Janet Kay Jensen. Together they have compiled many references to noshing in literature both past and current and then included the recipe for said reference. For example a recipe entitled “Wished-For Spicy Tomato Sauce with Meatballs” includes a reference from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

A number of my favourite writers are quoted, in addition to Ernest Hemingway, including: Anne Tyler, Isabel Allende, Frank McCourt, Maya Angelou, Jan Karon, Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Isak Dinesen (Babette’s Feast), Barbra Kingsolver, Elizabeth Berg, Maeve Binchey, Toni Morrison, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Charlotte Bronte, Marlena de Blasi, Robertson Davies, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fanny Flag, Charles Frazier, Joanne Harris, Alice Munro, John Irving, Wally Lamb, D.H. Lawrence, Madeline L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Laura Esquivel, Colleen McCullough, Yann Martel, James A. Michener, Anais Nin, Rosamunde Pilcher, Annie. E. Proulx, Anita Shreve and last (but not least) Amy Tan. Wow, I didn’t think the list would be that long!

As I write this it is the coldest day of the year and throughout the night it was -50 degrees! Last night we snuggled up in front of a hockey game and then got under the feather covers to read our books as the wind howled outside our window. Luckily for me, I work from home and had no client meetings to venture out for. This evening just may be the repeat of the last one. Stay warm Lovies.

Kath’s quote: “The return to the kitchen was not easy. I wanted my daughter to know her past, to eat what I had eaten in my childhood; however, I quickly realized that I no longer remembered my family’s recipes…I forced myself to try and remember a recipe on my own. And that is how I discovered, as I had already known in my childhood, that it was possible to hear voices in the kitchen”.-Laura Esquivel, Between Two Fires

Love never fails.

I graduated from the University of Winnipeg (in the 70s!) with my degree in Dramatic Studies. Since that time I believe it has been renamed the Theatre and Film Program. This meant that in addition to regular class time, we were “encouraged” to participate in theatre productions put on by the department and other community theatrical organizations. This meant for very long days. Thank the Lord that my sweet dad would drive from EK to pick me up if it was after dark or particularly cold.

Although I was a thrifty student and consistently took my lunch to school, there was no refrigeration offered to us (or insulated bags or freezer packs for that matter), so even though I would trust the holding temperature of my lunch for a couple of hours until, I would definitely not do so until supper.

Often times the entire cast and/or production team would head out together looking for somewhere we could eat affordably. I remember one spot in particular-it was an Asian family restaurant run by a new Canadian named Hu. You may remember him from his restaurant called the Mandarin on Sargent or the River Mandarin on River. We would empty our pockets and Hu would count our couple of bills but mostly change, and declare that he could come up with something quite nourishing for us. It would often be a fried rice divided among many mouths. We were quite sure that the value of the dish far outweighed the money that we chipped in. But that was a reflection of Hu’s kind heart.

I recently visited a new Vietnamese place just opposite the University of Winnipeg on Portage Ave for lunch: Banh Mi King and it was full of students. I returned this past weekend for the same meal –their delectable Charbroiled Pork Noodle Salad Bowl. On Saturday at 6 pm it was packed again, but not with students. This time it was bursting with “Skip the Dishes” couriers. Oh my, how the world has changed! In a good way….I think. D and I had seen a Matinee including popcorn and we didn’t want a big supper just something that would fit into a single bowl.

I remembered the Banh Mi King with their gluten friendly bowl served with charbroiled pork and vermicelli noodles over a bed of greens with herbs, bean sprouts, pickled daikon and carrots, shredded cabbage and topped with peanuts, cooked green onions, and crispy onions! We immediately tucked in and were surprised when we slowed down with still half a bowl remaining. The tastes were so varied and fresh and clean. We continued slurping up the noodles from our raised bowls with chopsticks. So good!

D calculated that 2 fast food burgers and add ons would have cost more than these wholesome and nutritional bowls.

Kath’s quote: “There is a unique freshness when eating buckwheat noodles cold with plenty of herbs and citrus acidity. I can’t think of any better use of chopsticks on a hot and sweaty evening”. -Yotam Ottolenghi (my newest culinary crush).

Love never fails.

I first read Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander in the 90’s when we were busy with kids. I distinctly remember dropping Boo (our youngest) off at her dance class and then finding a spot at a coffee shop near by. A mixture of snow and rain was falling outside and I don’t mean “falling” in a pretty snow globe way but dumping down. As a Mom I was always a nervous driver with my kids in the car and I was already worried about my drive home.

But for 45 minutes I didn’t think about another thing pertaining to my life-I was totally swept away by the story of Claire and Jamie. Fast forward 25 years and our eldest recommends that I catch an Outlander episode. She was quite certain that I would love the music score, the natural beauty of Scotland and the gorgeous cinematography and she was right-I was hooked at the opening credits.

Now it so happened that Sister #2 who is as avid reader as myself had just completed reading the final book of the Outlander series and loaned me a shopping bag full of 1400 page books. It took me an entire winter to move from book two to the final story that Diane Gabaldon had written (until that time that is).

So now I am addicted to the TV show and addicted to the novels! At the Christmas of that same winter said daughter gave me a cookbook for Christmas (it is her thing for me an I love it!). It of course was entitled Outlander Kitchen. I poured through the book like a work of fiction as Theresa Carle-Sanders had received permission form Diana to include excerpts from the first books. Each excerpt is connected to mention of a dish or a recipe, hence the delightful theme of the cookbook.

I must confess that I have actually not made any meal from the book. That is because I keep my recipe books close at hand in the kitchen and I had put Outlander Kitchen on an office shelf with other books that combine recipes and literature. Well as of today, Outlander Kitchen is migrating to the kitchen shelf. I look forward to sharing my successes with you in the future.

A postscript to all of this, I was at a Food Bloggers Canada conference and I heard on our final day together that Theresa was a fellow blogger and had attended the conference. I tried to no avail to find her because Outlander fans love to connect! Supposedly, I had missed her by thaaat much….. I reread her bio on the book fly leaf to find that she lives on Pender Island in BC- a place I have tried so hard to visit. I believe 2020 will be the year and in the mean time I look forward to reading her newly published Outlander Kitchen II: Journey to the New World and Back Again.

Theresa’s dedication in her first book reads thusly-

Kath’s quote:

To Howard, My Englishman.

You look and sound a lot like Frank,

but your heart, and love is pure Jamie.

Love never fails.