Canadian Thanksgiving

October 10, 2015

There are few things more lovely than an early October morning in Ontario.  The sky is a brilliant blue, the roadside and woodlot maples all shades of fire.  I’m going early to the farmer’s market, because this is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, and the market will be extra-busy.

We’re having Thanksgiving dinner with my brother and his family, my adult niece and nephew home for the weekend from jobs and university, along with the youngest niece, in the last year of high school.  Our contribution to dinner will be the wine, and dessert.  I’m making pear crumble and raspberry cake.  If it’s a nice day – and it’s supposed to be, warm and sunny – we’ll arrive, chat, go out for a walk with Ginger, their labradoodle, come back to the house, open the wine, get in each other’s way in the kitchen, and sooner or later eat turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, salad and squash.  Then we’ll all be too full for dessert, so we’ll talk some more, and have coffee and dessert an hour or so later, after the dishes are done.

The market this morning was indeed busy.  I bought pears, and the vegetables for this week’s meals, and two beeswax tapers for our dining room table.  (It’s dark now when we eat dinner, or nearly so, and we like the smell of beeswax rather than artificial waxes.)  Every stall at the market was heaped with local produce – an overabundance of choice, in deep, jewel-like colours:  the purples of plums and cabbage and beets; the reds of peppers and apples and tomatoes; the oranges and yellows of carrots and pears and golden beets, and all the shades of green of brassicas and lettuces and string beans.

Canadian Thanksgiving has its origin in the Harvest Festival of the Anglican and other churches, and there couldn’t be a better time of year for it.  It’s not the huge holiday of Thanksgiving in the USA.  But it’s still a time for many families to get together, celebrate the harvest, enjoy the autumn weather and each other.

I’ve got the pears ripening in paper bags with an apple in each, and tomorrow I’ll make the crumble and the cake.  Here’s the cake recipe: it’s never failed me.

Raspberry Cake With Lemon Drizzle

1-1/2 cups (375 mL) all-purpose flour

1/2 cup (125 mL) whole wheat flour

1 tsp (5 mL) each: baking soda, baking powder

1/2 tsp (2 mL) each: table salt,,ground ginger

2 large eggs

3/4 cup (185 mL) sunflower or safflower oil

1-1/2 cups (375 mL) granulated sugar

2 tsp (10 mL) pure vanilla extract

2-1/2 cups (625 mL) fresh raspberries

1 c semi-sweet chocolate chips, if desired

1/2 tsp (2 mL) finely grated lemon zest

Lemon Drizzle (optional):

1 cup (250 mL) icing sugar, sifted

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

Juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon, as needed

In large mixing bowl, whisk or stir together all-purpose and whole wheat flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and ginger.

In separate large bowl using wooden spoon or whisk, beat eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla until well blended. Stir in raspberries and zest (and chocolate chips if used). Add to flour mixture. Mix well.

Pour batter into greased bundt pan. Bake in centre of preheated 350F (180C) oven until tester inserted in centre comes out clean, about 50 minutes.

Let cool 15 minutes in pan, then turn out on to wire rack.

If making lemon drizzle, in small bowl stir together sugar, lemon peel and enough lemon juice to make an icing of drizzling consistency.

Drizzle icing over warm or room temperature cake.

Makes about 12 servings.

Hint-of-Chocolate Pancakes: an Improvisation

October 7, 2015

Today BD and I had an appointment in the city forty minutes to the west of us at twelve noon. So we decided to have brunch before we went – pancakes and sausages. A good idea, until I went to the freezer and the pantry this morning.

Problem #1? No small containers of soymilk, which I have to use in place of cow’s milk in the pancakes because of BD’s allergies.

Problem #2: No breakfast sausage. Just spicy turkey dinner sausages.

We live 10 miles from town, so it isn’t just a matter of running out to pick things up. But, ok, it’s brunch, spicy dinner sausages will do. But the pancakes? I had two choices: water, or the chocolate soymilk BD drinks. Chocolate pancakes? Why not!

Actually, they were quite good. Just a hint of chocolate, along with the blueberries I always add and the maple syrup on top. Here’s the recipe, in case you want to try it yourself. (I would add walnuts as well, if BD wasn’t allergic to them too!)

Hint-of-chocolate Blueberry Pancakes (recipe makes 6 pancakes)

¾ cup all-purpose whole wheat flour
¾ tsp baking powder
½ cup blueberries (or any other fruit you like – raspberries would be good!)
1 c or a little less chocolate soymilk or milk
1 egg
2 Tbsp light oil – I use safflower.
Mix together the whole wheat flour and baking powder. In a separate cup, mix the egg, soymilk, and oil. Blend the two together, adding more soymilk if necessary to create a fluid batter. Add the blueberries.

Cook on a hot griddle or lightly oiled frying pan until bubbles show throughout the pancake and the top surface looks slightly shiny and set. Flip and cook for another minute or two.

Serve with your preferred toppings – ours is warm maple syrup!

What improv pancakes have you made?

On William Morris

October 6, 2015

Recently I’ve read a number of posts, or comments on posts, where the writer states that the impetus for beginning a more minimalist life was the experience of clearing out a relative’s home after their death. I’ve shared that experience, more than once, and I too believe it was a major reason I try to live as simply as possible. Even so, I seem to have accumulated more possessions than I’d like.

Minimalism, for me, isn’t about bare counters and ‘everything in its place’. My credo is that of William Morris: ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’.

In clearing out my parents’ house finally this spring, the two categories of things we found hardest to deal with were my mother’s watercolour paintings, and, the objects – mostly porcelain and china – that had made the journey from England, and in some cases had been in my mother’s or father’s family for several generations. Heirlooms. Not of any financial worth, but all had stories attached.

Even among three children and three grandchildren, we couldn’t keep all of my mother’s flower paintings. She was prolific, and, at the height of her talents, good. We all chose a couple we truly loved, gave a few away to friends, and gave the rest to the local horticultural society for their monthly draw table, knowing that way they’d go to people who loved flowers (and who chose the painting as their prize from the table, as that’s how those things tend to work.)

And the heirlooms, some of which are neither beautiful nor obviously useful? We kept those, even though they added to our possessions. How could we not? Our history as a family is reflected in them: the Toby jug from the pub my great-great-great grandmother kept; the vases my sea-captain great-great uncle brought back from China; the willow-pattern plates my father ate his Sunday dinners from at his grandfather’s house. We don’t own these things; we keep them in trust for the next generations, as repositories of the stories that go with them. They make the family history tangible, and, therefore, are both useful and meaningful.

So perhaps for me William Morris’s statement needs a slight revision: ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, believe to be beautiful…or know to be meaningful‘.

Crumble, Crisp or Buckle: Fall Fruit Desserts

October 4, 2015

Saturday mornings are for visiting the farmers’ markets, and this time of year the stalls are overflowing with fall fruit: plums, apples, raspberries, grapes, and pears. I wanted to buy some of each!

I had promised dessert for a dinner with friends last night, so I did buy some pears along with my usual apples. Driving home, I reviewed what I could do with them, and settled on one of my favourites, a pear-and-ginger crumble. It’s so simple and tastes wonderful. Here’s the recipe, which uses oil rather than butter because of BD’s allergies; you can use butter, of course, if you want.

Pear-and-ginger Crumble

6 medium pears, peeled, cored, and sliced

1/2 cup dried cranberries

6 pieces candied/crystallized ginger, chopped into small pieces

1/2 c brown sugar

3/4 c oatmeal

3/4 c all-purpose whole wheat flour

1/2 c light oil – I use safflower, but sunflower or corn works too

1 tsp powdered ginger.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread the sliced pears over the bottom of a 9″ square pan. Sprinkle the cranberries, chopped ginger, and 1/4 cup of brown sugar over the pears.  Add about 1/4 c water (unless the pears are very ripe) to provide moisture.

Mix the dry ingredients (including the other 1/4 cup of brown suger) with the 1/2 c oil and spread over the fruit.  Bake for 40 minutes.  Serve warm, with ice cream, cream or yogurt if you want.

Now, I call this a crumble; others might call it a crisp.  I also have a recipe for a fruit buckle, which is slightly different.

1/4 c light oil

1/4 c brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 c whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/3 c liquid – milk, buttermilk, or water all work

2 cups chopped fruit

Topping:

1/4 c light oil

2 Tbsp brown sugar

1/3 c whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon, ginger, cloves or a mix

Preheat the oven to 350.  Mix together the first 1/4 c oil, sugar, egg and salt; add 1 c flour, baking soda, and liquid and mix well.  Spread in a 8 or 9 inch greased square pan; cover with the chopped fruit. Mix together the remaining ingredients, spread over the fruit.  Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. (This recipe is adapted from the Blueberry Buckle recipe in my beloved Harrowsmith Cookbook Volume 1. I don’t know why it’s called a ‘buckle’; the recipe originated in Nova Scotia, so it may be a regional term.)

Both of these are very simple to make and are adaptable to many fruits or combination of fruits. (I also like to think they are healthier than a pie, although I may be fooling myself with that thought!)

What are your favourite fall fruit desserts? Please share your recipes!

Budget Check!

October 1, 2015

It’s the first of the month, the day I add up and analyze all the expenses that I entered into the spreadsheet all of the previous month. And because it’s the 1st of October, it’s also time to do a larger analysis, which I do every three months.

Let me preface this by saying I pretty well made up our budget: the numbers I assigned to categories other than fixed expenses were fairly random, my gut feeling on what we had been and should be spending. It turns out I was right on the money (forgive the pun, it was unintended) on some things, and out to lunch on others.

Here’s where I was right (defined as being with 10% of the average monthly expenditure): car maintenance (not gas); the cats; clothing, health – over-the-counter drugs and anything our drug plan doesn’t pay for – and holidays.

What I overestimated: lawn and garden expenses, and, house repair and maintenance. Given we’ve been doing a fair bit of house renovations this year, this latter one surprises me – but it’s mostly been cosmetic, and paint just doesn’t cost that much, I guess.

Now for what I underestimated – the longest list!

Car running expenses. This one surprised me, since we’re not commuting to work any more. We live in the country, so all shopping, library visits, movies, etc., mean a drive. I didn’t realize how much of this I did on my way home from work before, trips that now entail driving to town. I need to get better at consolidating trips!

Charity: well, we should be giving more than I had budgeted, so this one is a good thing.

Entertainment: twice what I had budgeted. But we like going to movies…and the occasional play. Expensive rural internet means Netflix or its competitors isn’t an option. Hmmm.

Groceries: we choose local and sustainable over cheap for meat, fruits and vegetables. It costs. BD’s allergies also mean some specialized foods that are also expensive. I try to make up for it by buying other things at NoFrills, but I don’t think I’ll ever get the monthly expenses down to what I thought I could.

Household: this was a catch-all for anything that wasn’t health and wasn’t groceries, like a new broom or picture hangers. I’m surprised by how high it is, given that we try not to buy much. A surprisingly high portion of it is fees: drivers’ license renewal, memberships, credit-card renewal fees (worth it, though, because we use our air miles frequently).

And then there is Miscellaneous – which differs from Household in that it involves things like haircuts and pedicures and anything else that didn’t fit anywhere else. I probably should just amalgamate these last two.

Our variable expenses are running about 20% higher overall than I thought they would. Now, this isn’t a huge problem – we’re still spending less than what is coming in, but it’s not leaving us with as big a cushion as I would like, and, because we only retired in the spring, the tax withheld from our pension cheques probably is underestimated, which means we’ll be paying a chunk of income tax in the spring. Once I see how much that is, I’ll have the pension deductions adjusted appropriately so it doesn’t happen in another year. BD turns sixty this month, so he starts receiving a small government pension in November as well, which will also need considering when it comes to tax time.

The completely flexible piece in our budget is the holiday spending. If I take that line out of the budget we’re spending about 70% of our net pensions, so overall I think we’re doing fine. We’re not touching our registered retirement savings plans, or our other savings, at all, and we have no debt. There were a lot of raised eyebrows and voiced concerns when I chose to retire two years early, reducing my potential pension by about 20%, but I was fairly confident we could do it. So far, fingers crossed, it looks like I was right.

Words to Live By

September 30, 2015

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.

This quote, apparently wrongly attributed to Mother Theresa, remains one of my favourites.  It doesn’t matter who actually said it – it remains a valid and validating statement.

I can’t, for example, paint a masterpiece.  But I can create art for handmade birthday cards, the image usually one I think will have some extra meaning for the person receiving it.

I will never write a best-seller.  But my first novel has been enjoyed by quite a few people, and has been well reviewed.

I will never be a master chef, but I can create meals from scratch that are enjoyed by friends and family.

I am no design guru or master renovator, but I have mudded and caulked and painted and wallpapered and laid tile with care to help create a home we love.

At the end of my career I received a provincial award for contributions in my field of education, completely unexpectedly.  I had never done anything huge, just a lot of small things over many years.

In a recent article in the New York Times, OpEd writer David Brooks asked readers how they found purpose in life.  He writes  “a surprising number of people found their purpose by… pursuing the small, happy life.”

Small things with great love.  Words to live by, at least for me.

Fall Migration

September 29, 2015

Late yesterday afternoon I walked at Point Pelee National Park in southern Ontario. Known world-wide as a birding mecca in the spring, it’s quieter in the fall, although migrants still pass through. Yesterday it was blue jays, in the thousands, and in two – or perhaps three – layers. The highest birds were flying south, towards the tip of the sandspit that is Point Pelee, jutting out into Lake Erie. From here – or to here, in the spring – birds can fly over the the lake, never too far from land, following the point and then the islands – Pelee, Middle, – to the other shore. It’s why it’s such a hotspot for birding, the first landfall for tired birds making the long trek across the lake.

But jays don’t like to fly over water, so the waves of birds fly south, see the water, and turn back, to follow the shoreline around to the west and cross the Detroit River.So the second layer of jays, lower than the southbound birds, is flying north. There are so many birds the skies look like Toronto highways in rush hour, except the birds are moving faster.

The third layer of birds are those that have dropped down to tree height to feed. Migration needs energy, and the woods are full of jays seeking any source of energy they can find. Like all corvids (the crow family) blue jays are omnivores, and dragonflies, migrating monarchs, other insects, berries, – just about anything edible – will provide fuel for this long flight.

Other than the jays, the park is quiet. A few cyclists on the empty roads, a few other walkers, no other birders late in the afternoon. I don’t think I have ever been here on a weekday afternoon in September, although I have been walking these trails since I could toddle. I grew up close by, and the park was a frequent Sunday afternoon destination for our family.

Here, too, I brought BD when he first started to make the long trek from Toronto to my childhood home to see me the first summers we were going out, and, perhaps most importantly of all, it was here I introduced him to birding.  I’d been a casual birder since earliest childhood, identifying the birds of woodland and fields from a children’s bird-book, part of learning my world, along with trees and wildflowers and insects and rocks. One May afternoon  – probably Mother’s Day weekend – as we walked along the west beach trail, BD said “What are all those people looking at?” “Birds,” I answered, and pointed out in quick succession a yellow warbler and a Baltimore Oriole.  One casual question, an equally casual response – and our lives changed forever.

We learned to bird properly in the early 80s, taught in the field by the companionship, generosity, and good nature of some of the top Ontario birders. It’s been a passion ever since, although what that looks like changes with time. We no longer come to Pelee in the spring: the long drive, crowds, and the too-competitive nature of some birders (and the disregard for the fragility of the ecosystem by some bird photographers) has kept us away. We’ve evolved now into patch-watchers, birding our own local area and watching and recording the seasonal and yearly changes – the return of ravens and sandhill cranes, the increase in red-bellied woodpeckers, the disappearance of house sparrows. It’s a way of birding I prefer: not a competition, but a study, deepening our understanding of where we live, of our world. And as much of it is done on foot, or after a very short drive, it’s more sustainable.

But it’s good to come back to a place that nurtured and nourished us as beginner birders all those years ago. At every turn of the trail memories of what we saw there – a screech owl in that clump of cedars,the red-headed woodpeckers on that snag, the northern waterthrush in this swamp – come back to me.  A passion born on these trails has taken us to seven continents, to places in China and India and Tibet that most Westerners never see, and given us friends and contacts around the world.

Like these north-flying jays, we’re looking now for easier ways to do things.  Long trips over water are no longer as appealing as they once were, and moving to warmer climates for the winter holds great attraction.  But as long as there are trails to walk, birds to watch, and a place to hang a feeder or two, we’ll be fine.

Routines and Frustrations

September 28, 2015

It can take a long time to get back into a routine, especially when that routine is self-directed.

Since my holiday earlier in September I’m having difficulty getting back into many of my routines. I’m not writing regularly, exercising regularly, or even eating as well as I was. Now I’m away from home again, staying at my sister’s house for a while, keeping her cats company for a few days of the three weeks she and her husband are in India playing in the World Bridge Championships. (I can’t even play euchre, but the cats don’t care about that. They’re just happy to have a warm body to sleep with again, rather than just the teenager from across the street who feeds them every day.)

I’m also feeling some of the frustration all writers feel unless their book is a best-seller. While some of of my friends and family have…

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Dreaming of Soup

September 25, 2015

It must be fall.

I woke up this morning from a dream about making soup. Italian wedding soup, to be precise. Of course, I’m craving it now, but as I have none of the ingredients in the house, and no trip to town planned for today, it will have to wait a day or two.

I don’t usually dream about food, but I think a number of factors came together to produce this dream. I was planning menus yesterday, and thinking about making soups for lunches, now we’re home all day. I have either a doozy of a cold or the worst fall allergies I’ve ever experienced – can’t tell which, as my nose is running like an open tap but I have no aches, pains, or lack of energy – so there’s an association with soup as a comfort food. Plus, I actually did make soup yesterday.

While I was away, BD bought the biggest cauliflower he could find, on the basis he didn’t need to buy any other vegetables. (This is the man that eats the same thing every day for breakfast, and another ‘same thing everyday’ for lunch, unless I intervene.) Half of it was still left when I got home Tuesday. We ate part of it in a frittata, but there was still a chunk left, so I looked around for what else we had – potatoes, half a box of frozen vegetable broth, garlic, onion. Definitely enough for soup.

Some years ago I bought myself a second slow cooker, a small one. Except ‘slow’ cooker is the wrong term for this device: it’s a fast cooker. The chopped cauliflower and potato, frozen broth, and garlic was boiling within an hour on high, and then simmered away for another half-hour or so until I could first mash it, and then use my stick blender to puree the mix. I adjusted the seasonings, added cumin, and voilá! -today’s lunch. I’ll turn the ‘fast cooker’ on soon, on low, and bring it back to a simmer, and eat it for lunch with sourdough toast and a sharp cheese for me, and hummus for BD.

And tomorrow when I go to town, I will buy what I need to make Italian Wedding Soup (with chicken or turkey meatballs, for BD’s allergies). I suspect the ‘fast cooker’ is going to be out on the kitchen counter most days now, as the bite of fall sharpens the air, and good long fall hikes sharpen the appetite.

What are your favourite soups? Do you have recipes to share?

Finding Space

September 24, 2015

Vacations, for me, are about finding space. I mean this literally. If a trip doesn’t include time spent in at least one of grassland, salt-marsh, range land, moorland or desert then I’m not getting what I need from it. Wide open skies in a huge blue bowl above me; views that go on for miles, the song of birds somewhere in the air.

So when BD’s cousin Liz and I went west for ten days we spent some of the time in the Rockies (almost obligatory when showing a visitor from Scotland the west of Canada) but we spent more of it in the prairies. I have no idea why I need space the way I do. I grew up in flat farming country, mostly untreed, and I carry the genes of generations of fen and salt-marsh dwellers. Is that enough to explain it? All I know is that places that others find bleak, or boring, are the places I love the most.

This love of grassland is the only part of Lena, the protagonist of my novels, that I took directly from myself. Her reaction in the excerpt below was mine, the first time we drove east from Denver and looked down on the High Plains.

Two days later, in mid-morning, we rode up from the bowl of a grassy valley between two ridges of land. We urged the horses up to the crest. As Clio came abreast of the larger horses, I reined her to a stop and looked out. I gasped.

Beyond this final ridge, the land fell away quickly in a series of declining hills. A sea of grass extended far beyond sight toward the horizon. From this height, we could see the roll of the land and the sweep and ripple of the pale, sere grasses. The sky soared above us, and the boundary between land and air looked like a hazy blur on the distant edge of vision. As I gazed at the space and enormity of the grasslands, an unrealized tension eased. I felt an inner expansion, the loosening of constraint. I could live down there, I thought, suddenly, fiercely, wanting it. I could lose myself in that land, below that sky, in all that emptiness.

This time we flew to Calgary, and drove from there, and I felt exactly the same way again at the point the land changes from the mountains to the grass and cereal lands of the prairies. I’ve walked on a few of the world’s great open spaces – the Tibetan Plateau, the Kalahari, the moorlands of northern England and Scotland, the tundra of the Canadian Arctic and the snowfields of the Antarctic – and my reaction is always the same.

BD is good about this. Papua New Guinea? he suggested, to look for birds. (It’s forest.) You go, I said, I’ll go to North Dakota. Peru? he tried, another time. He went; I spent the week in Texas birding the salt-marshes. I’ve spent my time in the forests of the Amazon, and Malaysia, and northern Canada, and I have wonderful memories. I don’t regret those trips, but thinking about them doesn’t soothe my soul the way the memories of sky and wind and space do.

What speaks to you, soothes your soul, loosens your constraints?