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Comfort foods are inexplicable. There's no accounting for why some people like butterscotch pudding on toast. Or why others couldn't even imagine eating gravy on French fries.

Or, say, why hot drinks just don't do it for me. Must be all those 'white milkshakes' my Dad used to whip up. This morning, I made one in a different color: bright green.

Green from spinach, plus an overripe banana, a forgotten clementine, some soy milk, a bit of OJ, and a few dashes of ground ginger. It probably wouldn't qualify as comfort food for most people, but it did the trick for me.

Oh Nine

Lucy's mum, the sweetest of pies, dropped off a plate of oliebollen for our party last night. I'd never had -- or heard of -- this traditional Dutch NYE treat, but they tasted familiar, since my mum used to fry bread dough into balls when we were growing up.

Elsie instructed us to heat the oliebollen in the oven and then sprinkle them with powdered sugar. My favorite were the ones shaped like little wheels with a bit of apple inside. The others -- studded with fat raisins -- were just as chewy and rich though.

I saved a couple extra out for Adam and I, and we ate them for breakfast. Here's to new foods and a new year.

Eggilla

Last week, Adam kicked off the beginning of his holidays with a few days of Mexican breakfasts. Here's a picture of black beans with slow-cooked chocolate mole, fresh cilantro, squeaky sunflower sprouts, all rolled up in a tortilla made from egg instead of corn. Es muy sabroso.

If you want to make your own eggilla, just mix up some eggs as if you were going to make scrambled eggs, but when you pour your eggs into the pan, don't touch them until the bottom is completely cooked. Then very carefully flip the entire eggilla over, and cook the other side until golden. It helps to have either a non-stick pan or use enough oil to be able to gently slide the eggilla out of the pan. Then, just add the fillings and roll it up!

Near Sighted

Stress Less

My 'strategies' for feeling well over the holidays have been: going to bed by midnight every night, never having more than one alcoholic drink a day, minimizing the amount of junk food I eat, trying not to overfill my plate, saying no to family activities when I need to be alone, reading, watching movies, delegating, lowering my expectations, having a good attitude, not trying to be perfect, wearing my favorite boots (shown) as often as possible, and adding 'Drink Water' to every 'To Do' list I make. Oh, and trying to take my vitamins, although I've been forgetting some days. Also, I picked out two cool outfits and wore them each twice in a row -- to different events with different people -- instead of trying to reinvent myself every day.

Ha. So, nobody will know if they got Original Riva or Riva 2.0.

See Ya Later

Bite Hard is on hiatus until later this month.

I'm working! Yeah, I do that sometimes.

Dangling a Carrot

A message from my Pappie!

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to all you city dwellers:

i know a pot full of carrots don't sound like much, but considering i just came from my garden/greenhouse and harvested a bunch of fresh, right-out-of-the-ground, delicious, juicy carrots that polly and i will have for supper...eat your heart out while we're eating our carrots.

... and i still have one more harvest to go.

with a layer of straw i could probably extend the time for a few more weeks in the ground, depending how cold it gets.

- jakc of the universe

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Book Warm

I glean book titles the way other people collect actual books. Instead of buying books, I keep a running list of titles I want to read and then request them from the public library. I love the ritual of walking to the Rosemount library, picking up my order, browsing through the DVDs and the fiction and the cookbooks.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a fat, old paperback that the library keeps in multiple copies. And now that I'm reading it every night in the bath, I can hardly remember life without Francie, the story's main character, who loves her father more than anything in the world, reads like the Dickens, and seems to think about eating quite a lot.

Francie's family is poorer than dirt, but still, the book manages descriptions of gorgeous meals of thickly sliced 'tongue,' sweet rye bread, and hot, strong coffee. Francie herself spends every Saturday afternoon reading on the fire-escape, drinking iced water (when there is ice in the ice box) and eating a bowlful of pink and white peppermint wafers, which she purchases with the money she earns from selling found junk. To me, the foods Francie subsists on sound fairly stunning, and yeah, it's easy to romanticise from my position, but, at the same time, food can be a refuge when you feel like you've got nothing else.

That said...it's dinner time!

Booty

Nobody reads me like my dad. Check out the contents of the care package he sent me to help relieve the heebie jeebies. Of course, the resident security guards had to perform their inspection before I was allowed to open it up.

Logy

Juice Monkeys

Suni's Junior

Guess who?

Suni's fatter, badder, bolder doppelganger, Kamika.

Bowla

For the past few weeks, I have been struggling. But it's humbling how something as simple as good food can always save me. Like the cake Cathy brought over last week. Long after it was all gone, I still pictured Cathy standing in her kitchen slicing each of the strawberries and whipping cream for the top. Such a simple act, and so comforting.

What I made tonight was Sweet Potato Curry with Red Lentils. It is all my favorite things: savory, spicy, easy, cheap, and healthy. If you want to DIY, the recipe is below.

Sweet Potato Curry with Red Lentils

First thing, finely chop one medium onion and set aside.

Next, peel a large sweet potato and cut into 1-inch chunks.

Next, bring 3 ½ cups of water to a boil in a medium or large pot. Add an organic bullion cube. (You can also just use proper stock instead of water.)

While you're waiting for it to boil, throw in the sweet potato.

Meanwhile, warm some oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and sauté, stirring occasionally. While it's cooking, peel and finely chop a hunk of ginger and a couple cloves of garlic. Put all this into the onions, plus a teaspoon of curry powder and another of freshly-ground cumin. Give it all a stir and keep it cooking for another minute or so.

While you're waiting, add a cup of red lentils to the boiling water and sweet potato. Then add all the onion stuff, stir, and turn the heat way down to simmer.

Cook for 10 minutes or until lentils are softened. The potatoes will already be softened.

You can really put things into the pot in whatever order you want. The key is chopping the onions, garlic, and ginger really finely and getting them softened up before they go into the pot. Also, don't overcook this dish. If you do, it turns to mush, but catch it before that stage, and it will be a lovely golden color with the beautiful orange sweet potato still intact.

Garnish bowls with chopped cilantro and plenty of plain yogurt or kefir. Best eaten with fresh bread for sopping.

Go Big

Karen and Brian went to a lot of trouble, although they claimed it was nothing at all.

They cooked a five-course dinner for eight of us a week or so ago.

First, they passed a platter of the slowest-roasted tomatoes and garlic with baguette and mild goat's cheese. Round it went, a few times at least, and then we were onto the salad course with cold beets, spinach leaves, blue cheese, and sugared walnuts. All this, I thought, was surely enough to fill us before the main course, but no, out came little plates of mashed celery root, topped off with shaved parmigiana, sauteed chestnuts, and delicate, green chives.

Karen and Mike

By this time, everyone was really warming up, swapping tales about Minnesota and New Brunswick, suggesting movie dates, and draining a bottle or two of vino, of course.

Then came pork tenderloin wrapped with mushrooms into the lightest pastry and plated with wild rice and tender pieces of squash. Nothing at all, remember.

We even found room for dessert plus a slice of homemade pumpkin bread...and Karen sent me home with my very own jar of green tomato chow. What an effort!

Classic Karen and Brian.

Mike and Cathy

Ornge Man

Jeremiah's base. He's inside.


I got left in the car, making funny faces to keep myself company.


Jeremiah, being a natural 'Blue Man.'

Nouveau-Brunswick

It was just enough time for me to unwind, maybe not completely, but significantly: four nights and five days in Wicklow, New Brunswick with my mum and Megan.

We spent it watching Wheel of Fortune, drinking cheap beer, getting manicures, eating at diners, grilling pork, reading inexcusably dumb magazines, shopping for Christmas presents, trying on clothes, walking to the garden and back, sharing jewelry, going to bed early, and snacking on potato chips and ice cream.


Garden tomatoes: so sweet, you could eat them like apples.
Noticed in my dad's workshop: unused golf balls and evidence of his dog, Megan.
Fancy Marimekko stockings from Helsinki via Ottawa to New Brunswick. In the background: Mum and Dad's pink-painted plywood deck.
Two cutie pies. You know it.
Thanks to Dad, even the birds eat well. This sits outside the living room window and attracts all manner of teeny birds, plus a couple greedy jays.
Toasted tomato sandwich with sides of bacon and sliced cucumber. The bread, notably, is called 'brown' (a.k.a. molasses bread) and was baked by Grandma's Bake Shop in Centreville. Veggies are from Dad's garden. Bacon is from a pig.
My mum and dad's last New Brunswick grape of the season. But I'll be getting a jelly delivery at Christmas. Seriously, who can grow organic grapes in New Brunswick? They both have green thumbs, although they deny it.
Keith's was the beer of my university days. Over the weekend, I drank it chilled while wearing gloves outside. It was crisp!
Made-to-order Grammatizer. What in it? Grandma's Restaurant and Bake Shop's own hamburger roll, two ground beef burgers, bacon, several slices of processed cheese, lettuce, tomato, and Gramatizer sauce. So decadent (if you look just to the front of the burger on the plate you can see a delicious drip from the bacon).

Saturday the 27th

Missing Link