Cold Mitten Friction

When Jeremiah and I were growing up, my dad used to apply Cold Mitten Frictions to our hands and faces after school. Yesterday, he reminded me about this old trick in an email, saying, 'take it from one beaut to another...stay natural. plus, it's cheaper and doesn't require any demand on your time. scrub your face 'hard' in the mornings with a cold mitten friction and you'll have the best countenance in Ottawa.'

Cold Mitten Friction: Get a bowl of cold water and a washcloth. Grab one corner of the washcloth under your thumb. Wrap the cloth around your hand as shown in the illustration above. Take the free part of the cloth hanging down from your hand, fold it toward the palm of your hand, and tuck it under the edge of the cloth crossing over the palm of your hand.

Dip the mitten in the cold water, and, starting with the hands, rub the skin briskly in an up and down motion. Proceed up the arm, briskly rubbing all areas of the skin.

(Modded directions from the The Gilead Institute)

You're Blocking My Sun

Mustard Egg

When I was growing up, one of the fast and easy breakfast foods in the Soucie household was called, simply: mustard egg. I don't know the evolution of this 'dish,' only that my mother loved it -- and still makes it from time to time.


To make one, melt a bit of butter in a pan, crack an egg into it, and then use a wooden spoon to break the yolk and stir up the egg a little. Before it starts solidifying, place a slice of bread on top, and cook until the egg firms up. For an extra special touch, flip it over and fry the underside of the bread in the remaining butter. Then, just slide it onto a plate and spread a thin layer of mustard over the egg. Finally, S&P it and then eat it all up.

X Country

My first time cross country skiing in...probably fifteen years!

The Next Level

Today, I took the 'green smoothie' to the next level by using black kale instead of spinach. Black kale is a popular winter green in some parts of Italy, but it's starting to become more readily available in North America too. The health benefits of black kale are many -- and, even when steamed, it makes a really sturdy base for winter salads or as a bed for marinated tofu.

Lucy warned me that the kale would have a stronger taste in drinks than baby spinach does. Even so, I think with a little more ginger and maybe a few leaves of mint, I could really develop a taste for this smoothie.

Green Smoothie (Intermediate Level)

1 ripe Ataulfo mango
four small stalks black kale (chopped into two inch slices)
small cube of ginger (peeled)
1/2 cup kefir (or more)
1/2 cup of cold water
1 tsp Udo's oil

Blend for a couple minutes on high. Drink!

Snert

I drove Miss Lucy to Dutch Grocery last week, and loaded up on paprika flavored potato chips, fluffy Dutch mustard, sliced rye bread, farmer's meatloaf, twenty kinds of licorice, and a large container of frozen pea soup (cutely dubbed 'snert' in the Netherlands). I packed some of the soup in Adam's lunch last week, and although he wanted to like it, he didn't.

I think the problem is that he'd never tasted pea soup before. It has a bit of an earthy, feet-like taste that takes some getting used to. As a kid, I couldn't bear the smell of it, even though my mother, a closet French-Canadian, loved the stuff. And now I appreciate why. The kind I bought at Dutch Grocery is thick and smokey with colorful shreds of carrot and generous bites of pork and bacon. Plus, I added half a snop of walnut oil and a fuzzle of ground black pepper for garnish. Delicious!

Still...eating something so hearty and hale this late in the season almost seems quaint, like patronizing the final dregs of cold weather with the appropriate food choice.

Camera Shy

The reason I haven't posted any pics lately is that my old bean had our point-and-shoot on his epic journey across North America. Here's evidence of the Canadian legs of his trip.


Top of the mountain in Golden, BC.


Middle of a steep run.


Break time on one of the tamer runs.


Two total fools. You know it.


Kevin, Shaelin, and Kristine. I miss those guys and want to meet that little one.


Amelia, Rebecca, and a little bit of Carl in the background. Ditto my above comments.

Burrrrritos!

Still no camera, so you'll have to imagine your own image of what I made for lunch!

First, open a can of black beans, dump them into a colander, and rinse them off a bit. Next, put a little pot on the stove, turn the heat on low, add some oil, and finely chop half a small purple onion, adding it to the pot. Then add in a clove of finely minced garlic, a spoonful of cocoa powder, a pinch each of nutmeg and sea salt, and a spoon of chipotle pepper paste (made by pureeing a can of chipotle peppers).

Cook this mixture until onions have turned slightly translucent. Then add the beans and the juice of half a lime. It's done when it looks creamy and is the beans are heated through.

Meanwhile, heat up a couple flour tortillas and shred some lettuce with your chef's knife. I also grated a bit of nippy white cheddar to melt over the beans. Assemble, and they're done!

Warming, quick, simple, cheap, and delicious. Oh yeah!

Drink All Around!

I'm home alone for yet another week! Which means that I don't always eat...'meals.' Not structured ones, anyway. After having a dinnertime snack of Purity gingersnaps and Sussex Golden Ginger Ale (native Maritime treats!), I decided to clean out the old system with a kefir smoothie.

Recipe

1 overripe nectarine (including skin)

1/2 cup kefir and whey

1/4 cup orange juice

CIMMABIN!

Today's Lassi

1 Ataulfo Mano (Yes, they are in season again! Hurrah!)

1 Cup Organic Pinhedge Farms Low Fat Kefir

1/2 Cup Water

1 Tablespoon Ground Cinnamon

Ataulfo Mangoes are also known as Honey Mangoes because they're so sweet and smooth. They also taste slightly of pine, but that's part of what makes them great. They're about $1.19-$1.69 each right now. Worth every single penny and all the fuel it takes to bring them from Mexico. Buy them by the case! (I do.)

Canadian Winter Tip #1

Wear rugby socks! They're waaaaaaay more comfortable than tights (which always ride up or down), not as hot as long undies, and much warmer than plain old jeans. They also stay up all day long, which you can't say for most knee socks.

A Peach

A late summer peach, canned by Megan who does everything with prefect precision. She managed to get these to taste mildly tart and maximally peachy. Yum!

Gotcha

Remember This?

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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