Like the snow, lavender shortbread has returned

As a great woman once said, it's cookie time.

I'm a student again. That means two things: I spend time in the kitchen when I'm avoiding school work, and I'm too poor to buy gifts for friends and loved ones this holiday season.

My plan instead is to keep my pantry stocked and buy tins of Danish cookies. J eats most of them and then I will refill them with my own homemade goodies.

Lavender shortbread cookies are easy peasy. I discovered them last winter when I came upon a large packet of dried lavender flours at Planet Organic in Edmonton.

Cut up 1 cup of soft unsalted butter. Cream in a large bowl with 1/4 cup white sugar. In another bowl, mix together 1 cup flour, 1/4 cup cornstarch, and 1/4 tsp salt.

Pour dry into wet and stir until combined. Add 2 Tbsp dried lavender flowers and mix well.
When your cookie dough is ready, turn it out onto a floured surface.

Flour your hands and begin kneading the dough.
Press your palms and the heels of your hands into the dough and push down and away.


Gently pick up the dough and rotate it 90 degrees.

Keep your hands floured with a dish of extra nearby.

Repeat this process 5 times in total. Kneading cookie dough is important because it makes sure everything is of the same consistency and that your dough will not crumble to pieces.


Divide the dough in half and shape into two balls. Put one dough ball aside.

Re-flour your surface and put the dough in the middle. As the butter in the dough continues to soften with handling, the dough will become sticker, so lots of extra flour is important.


Flour a large rolling pin and roll out the dough. It should take about 3 or 4 rolls. Make sure you keep rotating the dough 90 degrees as you roll or you will have a big mess and no cookies.


The dough should be about 1/4" in thickness.





This dough here is very happy. It can't wait to be cookies.


Cut out shapes using cookie cutters. Keep re-rolling up your scraps of dough until you've used up both halves.

The shapes can be placed close together, about 1/2" apart on ungreased baking sheets.

Bake them one sheet at a time in the middle rack of a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes. They are done when they are browned at the edges.

Look at all the happy cookies. They will make friends and family (and me) very joyful indeed.

These shapes all came in a package from the dollar store. You can find all kinds of fancy or strange ones. The hearts and stars of david are classic choices, but we liked that our pack also came with a teddy bear, an elephant, and a hippopotamus.

I made lots of all of the shapes. The elephants are pretty rad.

I played with them when I put them on the pan before going in the oven and when they came out a few elephants were walking one after the other like they do in the jungle.

But I'm not in the jungle. I'm in snowy Montreal. So I will keep making cookies and bringing a little extra warmth to the kitchen with my powerful little oven.





That is a very lonely hippopotamus. Of all the cookies in the batch, there was only one hippopotamus.


Here's the recipe:
1 Cup cool unsalted butter
1/4 Cup sugar
1 Cup flour
1/4 Cup cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp dried lavender flowers

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl.
Measure out lavender and set aside.
Mix other dry ingredients in a bowl.
Add dry ingredients to creamed butter and sugar. Stir until ingredients begin to become incorporated.
Add lavender and stir until well blended.

Turn out onto floured surface. Knead 5 times. Divide dough in half and roll out to 1/4" thickness. Cut into shapes. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes.

Cool on a rack.
Cookies will keep in a sealed container for up to 2 weeks. They get better with age.

the most amazing backyard garden i've seen

I promised more about J's mom's garden and on this rainy, muggy day I feel I could use a little sunshine, so let me lay it down.

Sharon has been an amateur gardener for all her life. It started with house plans, exercising her green thumb in the limited space of her home. She has a knack for plants, something she noticed when friends started bringing her their sick houseplants and Sharon was always able to nurse them back to health. Eventually, Sharon moved to the country(ish). She lives in a sweet little house on a corner lot with her husband Andre west of the west island.

As Sharon's collection of indoor plants grew, the plants themselves began to outgrow the house. She takes them outside in the summer and the space inside was becoming cramped. Andre built Sharon a solarium on the back of the house so she could take proper care of her plants throughout the winter and begin all her seeds for her garden in the early spring.

Sharon's outdoor garden beds now practically equal her house's interior space. She grows everything, without fertilizers or chemicals of any kind. The first bed in the main garden is almost entirely spinach. Sharon says it's taking over and she'll be pulling lots of it out in the fall. The only thing that can stand up to the bully-spinach is the equally aggressive dill weed.

Together they grow green and healthy. Whenever I go outside she tells me to pick more spinach. I think I'll go for one big harvest and then turn it all into spanikopita...

All of her salad greens are thriving. She has butter lettuce, red and green leaf lettuce. The leaves are small and supple. It would be a sandwich maker's dream to have that kind of a garden. "Hmmm, this could really do with a few tomato slices and some lettuce. Oh I know, I'll walk right out my back door and get some." Mind you... if I were the sandwich maker, I might be inclined to hire an assistant to get the cucumbers... they're prickly.

What impresses me most about her garden is the nightshades she grows. I've heard about people buying pepper plants and the like, but not Sharon. She grows peppers (hot and sweet) and eggplants of all kinds all from seeds.

I've never even seen some of the varieties she grows. There were albino eggplants (are they still aubergines?) and little mini globe ones. To see them all so healthy and thriving is a marvelous sight.

Andre even built Sharon an arbor for grapes. Much of that was lost in Hurricane Irene. I've never experienced a weather system like that, coming from the prairies. I haven't been back to her garden to survey the damage since, and Sharon said her sunflowers really took a beating from the wind and rain.

On the other side of the yard Sharon dug a big mound for her squashes. She grew mini watermelons this summer but they weren't doing very well. As far as I could tell that was a lot more watermelon than I have ever grown so I say they look damn fine to me.

Also growing in the squash patch: green and yellow zucchini, patty squash, butternut, and acorn. Oh yes, and in the middle of her flower beds in the front she's got a great big pumpkin growing slow and steady.

I forgot to mention the tomatoes. Holy ketchup, does she have tomatoes! Big red ones, round yellow ones, weirdly shaped pink ones, red cherries and grapes. They sort of pop up between the cucumbers and all along the fence. Sharon says she starts so many tomato seeds each year that she eventually loses track of which one is what.

The only thing better than a wonderful mother-in-law is a wonderful mother-in-law who has a bountiful garden and wants to share it.

Here's to Sharon and her green thumb.

Gee, Genovese Basil is Great!

J and Mel and I picked up a happy little basil plant a few months ago at the farmer's market. I tried to pick out the strongest, healthiest, fullest looking one they had. Little did I know that 3 months later, that little basil would be growing like Audry 2.

Lucky for us, though, this one doesn't feed on human flesh... just water and sunshine. When J walk pasts her and brushes her leaves with his side, the whole dining room fills with the sweet aroma. I've even caught him tearing off a leaf and rubbing it behind his ears.

Fresh basil is great in all kinds of dishes from pasta and tomato sauce to fresh Vietnamese salad rolls even to muddled summer drinks. The little plastic packages you get in the supermarket are expensive and almost always go rotten before I've used it all up.

So do yourself a favour and pick up a potted herb or two this summer. Give them room to grow by transplanting to a larger pot when they start to outgrow the one they came in.


And now... fresh basil pesto!
This recipe is easiest if you have a food processor or blender or bullet but if you're really determined all you need is patience.

Start with 2 packed cups of basil leaves, washed.


Chop 2-3 cloves of peeled garlic.

If you're using a food processor or other device, you can just keep adding things to the bowl. If you are doing this by hand, well, good on you. You'll need a separate large bowl to add each ingredient to as it is prepped.


Next, chop up the basil - to a coarse consistency. The key to a nice pesto is that there are still recognizable components. You don't want to turn your pesto into a runny mess.


Pesto can actually be made using all kinds of ingredients. Though the traditional method calls for basil, as the Italian variety comes from Genoa,
Sun dried tomatoes, grilled red peppers, olives, mint, and arugula are often found in variations on the traditional pesto alla genovese. As well, the traditional method of making pesto calls for a mortar and pestle, not a food processor... in case you were wondering. Pesto actually comes form an Italian word meaning "to pound". Sounds like a lot of work to me...

The next two ingredients are some of the most delicious things on the planet. Luckily for us, we have almost all had a chance to try fresh Parmesan cheese. I don't mean the powdery stuff that comes in a green cheese silo with "Kraft" emblazoned on the side. That stuff doesn't even need to be refrigerated. Real Parmesan is hard and grainy and grated so delicately it covers your pasta like a gentle snowfall.

Sigh...

So add a half of a cup of grated Parmesan (or grana padano or pecorino romano) to your bowl and combine.


The other ingredient that is a bit harder to come by is a third of a cup of pine nuts. At more than five times the price of most other nuts at the bulk food aisle of my grocery store, heed this warning and only buy as much as you need. Otherwise, you'll be shocked when you reach the checkout.






Once all these things are added to the bowl you can give it a few pulses in the processor. If you're doing this by hand, better to chop the nuts as finely as you can before adding it to your big bowl.

At this point there is only one or two things left to do, so you'd better have a big pot of water on the boil by now. If not, now is the time to get that organized. Don't forget to salt the pasta water!


To complete the pesto, you need a steady hand or a partner in crime. If you are using a food processor, slowly begin pouring in a half a cup of extra virgin olive oil as you continue to blend the mixture. The slow pour is essential to ensure proper emulsification (i.e. to make sure all the oil binds to the mixture rather than settling on top). If working by hand, may I first salute you as I waited to try this myself until I had a food processor of my own. Now, Either stirring or possibly even whisking, begin slowly pouring in the oil with your assistant's help to stabilize your bowl, pour the oil or mop your sweaty brow.

It's okay if you stop pouring for a bit to make sure everything is mixing together properly. Better to do it slowly than all at once because then it's already too late and there's not much you can do. It's kind of like salad dressing. But this is not one you'll want to just throw out and start again. So take your time.

Our first time making pesto was a bit of an adventure. This is one kitchen caper that definitely required two of us to go off without a hitch. Even with our careful pouring, we still got some oil pooling on the top of the bowl at the end. So don't be discouraged if that happens to you. It'll still taste amazing...

When your pasta water is boiling pour in your pasta of choice. Smaller shapes are often good with sauces that have a lot of stuff because when fully incorporated, the sauce gets trapped in all the little hidden nooks and crannies in the pasta shapes. Things like fusilli and cavatappi work great.


We used what we had on hand, which as luck would have it, was a package of fresh frozen roasted red pepper cavatelli. They are short, thick noodles that sort of look like hot dog buns because of the crease in the middle.

*** Remember - when making pasta sauce from scratch you should always conserve a cup or so of water from the pasta pot - it's called grey water and it's full of salt and starch and things that will make your sauce taste even better when a little is splashed in at the end. It will also help thicker sauces coat all the pasta evenly. And always cook your noodles to al dente. With a little bit of chewiness to them you can put them back on the heat of the stove to cook together with the sauce before it's served.

Planting a Vegetable Garden: Seed Starting Explained

Get yourself a greenhouse kit - ours came in a large-ish box and required no screws or tools or anything.

If you are at all like me when it comes to building things, you may want to call in some assistance. J does most of the putting together of things in our house. And then I turn the things into other things... usually dinner.



Make sure you find yourself a relatively bright location, though direct sunlight is not good for new seeds and baby seedlings.


Our dining room window was a perfect location to get our
garden started. The basil plant we picked up at the Farmer's Market a few weeks before was thriving quite well on that window bench.


With the plastic "glass house" cover stretched over the frame it was time to do some seeding.


Choose seeds that match the amount of sunlight to get in your garden. If the yard is shady all through the morning, you may not want to plant beefsteak tomatoes throughout. Some plants, like lettuces, like partial shade. Their delicate leaves get burnt by too much sun.

Also important to keep in mind, would you like to be harvesting throughout the growing season or are you waiting for a large crop right at the end of summer.

If you are like me, life's vicissitudes take you away from projects at times. For example, I got into grad school out east, which is great. Except it means I have to leave my summer garden here in Edmonton to go look for an apartment in Montreal before the beginning of fall term.

Pole beans and sugar snap peas sprout quickly and as long as you water them, will grow like crazy. They are easy to cook and are fun to pick as they grow taller and climb up things.

I like things that keep growing as you pick them.
Swiss chard and spinach are great. Butterleaf and red
leaf lettuces are also wonderful to have freshly picked for
sandwiches and salads.

Working in dirt is obviously rather dirty. Minimize the mess by purchasing handy little seed pods. They are compressed little pucks of dehydrated earth. When you pour hot water over them they expand and the outer netting can be broken away to make little holes for your seeds.

Don't be shy about the seeds. Best to put a few into each pod since not every one will take. You can thin them out as they grow.

Keep the plastic covers over the trays of seed pods
while they germinate. In a week or so you'll start seeing this!

Little Early Riser Beets (quite aptly named!) pushing themselves up out of their earthy beds. I think the beet shoots are the most exciting because of their so easily identifiable red stalks.

It makes me think about the early crop we hope to harvest later this summer before we leave for Montreal.

Keep your seedlings sheltered as they grow inside your greenhouse. It's very clear how delicate they still are and will need to be watched closely for the first little while.

When they get a little bigger and there are some obviously stronger seedlings, and this is one of the saddest parts about gardening, you have to thin them out and give the strong ones room to grow.

If they remain crowded in the little pods, their roots will all grow together and have to split the nutrients three ways. These poor little bok chois will meed a sad fate soon enough...


As it happened, this little seed nursery was started shortly before my 25th birthday.
As a gift, a good friend from work brought me plants that she had started from seeds as well.

Three separate containers of beefsteak tomatoes, each with several little seedlings, and a very special treasure: a container with three zucchini seedlings - all very healthy and strong. Zucchini should always be planted in three's, on a mound of dirt is best. Because you never know if you've got male or female plants, putting three together gives you the best chance at having your flowers pollinated to bring forth actual fruit.

One thing that we do not plan to plant here is lavender. I've seen some amazing lavender fields in my travels, most memorably in France, but I know how many years it takes to grow these sparse little plants into those marvelous domes of purple and green. I think someday when we have a house and a yard of our own we will put some lavender in to watch it grow year by year. But not in this house. Not when we're leaving in just a few months...

When you can be almost certain that any risk of frost has passed, prepare your garden bed.

Rake out any weeds that may have grown in. Remove large rocks and small stones and pieces of bark - anything that might get in the way of delicately growing roots.

Our soil here is a bit dry - with clay, sand, and coal deposits. We picked up some new garden top soil to mix in as well as sheep manure. J says it's better than cow because it doesn't smell as bad. I love that he knows these things...

We'll put everything in by the end of this weekend and see what happens. To be continued...

Elevate yourself at Transcend on 109

I needed to get out. The house is a middle of the week mess. I've been working and sleeping the opposite hours as J. We are officially out of coffee because I didn't leave myself enough time for a cup of the already brewed pot that used up the last of the grounds. Let me explain. Roommate Mel and I thought we would be extra clever and set her fancy coffeemaker to an alarm to have some brewed for J before he left at 6:45 the next morning. It took the last of this batch of coffee to set the pot and it made a full one. Mel and I were then supposed to wake up at our more acceptable hour of 8 or 9 and pour ourselves some of the rest. Neither of us remembered and when I got home last night after work at around 10:30, the coffee was cold and the mood was tense.

J was an angel and cleaned up after the mess I left when I prepared a big pasta casserole to stretch over the next couple of busy days and nights' lunches and dinners. We are a good team and he helps me when it's my turn to get tasks finished and the last part (i.e. doing the dishes or folding the clean laundry) gets dropped as I race out the door to catch the bus to work.

Morgana came over for a visit late this morning and we drank tea in my cold house ... the furnace is still on the fritz. When she mentioned that she wanted to go out to eat even though she wasn't really hungry, I knew it wouldn't take much convincing to go on a blog-research outing.
Since the move I've been getting our coffee from Transcend Coffee.

This operation began further south near Argyle Road - a local award winning roasting house, the good folks at Transcend spend several weeks every year on coffee travel - visiting the countries where the beans are grown and agreeing to buy from individual producers at fair prices. They then import the beans to Edmonton where they continue to be roasted in small batches at the Argyle location. This cafe opened in the old Pharoah's Pizza place on the corner of 87th Ave and 109 Street. It's a big, bright cafe with really really good coffee and espresso. For weeks I had been walking past this place mid-morning, on my the long trudge home from physio, reading the lovely sandwich board extolling their cappuccino and waffle deal - hot and fresh and only $6!

Today was the day. Today was our day to take time out from school, worries, the rudding piles of snow that still line the streets, and pause and enjoy something purely for ourselves. The cappuccino was creamy and rich and artfully rendered. For our waffle toppings we could choose from maple syrup, apple brandy butter, rosemary whipped cream, and jam (which changes periodically, today was Blueberry). They get their jams straight from The Jam Lady at the Saturday Strathcona Farmer's Market.

Though I was only supposed to get one topping included with my waffle I sprang for both the maple syrup and the rosemary whipped cream and just coughed up an extra buck. Still, at $7, this is the bargain of the year, as far as I'm concerned. The baristo brought us our delectable Belgian sweets and for a good 15 minutes or so Morgana and I ate in virtual silence, stunned by sensory overload.

I highly recommend stopping in at any of the Transcend locations as soon as you are able. Give your self a bit of time to escape from everything else and lose yourself in a cup of something. But be advised, you may want to bring your Mac laptop for fear of standing out...

3 Locations:
Garneau Café
8708 - 109 Street
Edmonton, AB T6G 1E9
780.756.8882

Argyll Café
9869 - 62 Avenue
Edmonton, AB T6E 0E4
780.430.9198

***And just recently opened***
Jasper Ave Café
10349 Jasper Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5J 1Y5
780.421.7734

giving thanks for this time of year

I have so much to be thankful for.

I have people to love who love me. We share interests, exchange ideas, help to make each other better, and hold the memories to a lifetime together. These people also happen to give and enjoy good wine. I am certainly thankful to friends who bring over nice wine when they come for dinner (or anytime for that matter).

I am supported in my choices by this same network of love and trust and it seems to continue to grow and strengthen as I get older and have more interesting impulses, ideas, and things to say. I hope they know that I thank them every day for this ongoing support.

I am extremely thankful that I live in a place that has clean water and air and my food is relatively safe to eat. I am not, for example spending my Thanksgiving exposed or in limited shelter, escaping from a deluge of red poison. I send my prayers to anyone who is not warm and being made welcome at someone's table this weekend.

And, of course, I am thankful for the food that I get to cook and eat - let me not forget to acknowledge my thanks to the people who have grown and cared for the food that I try to prepare as artfully as I may. I am also thankful to have friends and family to cook for and eat with, which is a joy to me always.

On Saturday I hosted my very first Thanksgiving meal since returning to the prairies. It was actually the first real sit-down dinner party (and I think probably the largest of it's kind) that I've ever hosted here. I will not take full credit for the success of the evening. My sister, Sarah, and the every constant and culinarily inclined Joey were the secrets in the sauce. Thanks to all of my friends and readers who came over. You're the best. Seriously. Someone compared the first few moments of the meal to that scene in Chocolat with Juliette Binoche - you know, the one where everyone suddenly starts eating silently and in slow motion and then they all break out into laughter. It was, admittedly, reminiscent of that scene.

Thanks to Marius and Four Whistle Farms for cutting me a beautiful leg of lamb. Weighing at almost 6 pounds it was enough to feed the fourteen of us and then some. I made slits in the meat just under the fat and inserted fresh organic garlic from Peas on Earth farm and big rosemary leaves from our own garden plants. Then I applied a rub made from grainy mustard, extra virgin olive oil, copped garlic, garden rosemary and oregano, kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, and a splash of maple syrup. I was actually quite rushed to prepare all of this in the 45 minutes between leaving the market and having to get back in the car to run to work for my 3-hour Saturday afternoon shift. So I know that this can be done quite quickly. I placed the meat in a roasting pan under 4 red onion halves, wrapped the dish tightly in plastic wrap, and refrigerated it for about 4 hours.

My other major cooking triumph that night was the vegetarian shepherd's pie. I got the idea when I was on the bike at the gym (watching food tv, of course). Hrm, side note, must get back to the gym after this weekend....
Chuck Hughes hosts the show Chuck's Day Off. I've never seen him before but I certainly approve of the butter, cream, and chevre that are used in the mashed potato part of the recipe. Switching lentil for ground beef is easy and super cheap and healthy. Lots of fresh wild mushrooms from the downtown market really gave the dish its character and texture. I roasted the spaghetti squash and garlic the night before to save time. It was possibly my favourite part of dinner and I still had tons to send home with friends and for my own leftover supply.

Joey made mashed yams with a maple candied walnut top. There was none left at the end of the night. And he made as much of it as I made of the shepherd's pie. Sarah and her boyfriend brought wine and made an arugula salad with dried currants. So many friends brought cheese - proof, if ever I needed some, that they love me.

Oh yes, and there were incredible devil's food cupcakes that Joey's friend made. Apparently she got the recipe from Joy of Cooking. They were so good and I got so many compliments about them I am planning on making sure she starts working at a bakery very soon. Has anyone seen help wanted signs at any nice little bakeries in town?

Other dessert items included a late night apple upside-down cake that I cranked out with roasting, cleaning, setting, and generally stressing the night before. There was also the requisite pumpkin pie, and other super sweet cakes and goodies.

If you were there, tell me what your favourite dish was. Or tell me what you’re thankful for. If you weren’t there, tell me what you had at your Thanksgiving this weekend. Or what of this harvest you may be thankful to receive this year.

planting a vegetable garden - stage 2

It has been a rainy couple of weeks. Living on the drought-ridden prairies, this ought to have been a great thing. But it has meant that I have yet to put any tomato plants in. They need a lot of sun and heat and I figured that all the water would just drown them. So I am now going to have to wait until I get back from New York next week. Hopefully July and August will be enough time for them to get settled into the garden and start producing fruit.

In the meantime, the things I did get in the ground before Victoria Day weekend are doing very well. To begin with, the sugar snap peas are exceeding my wildest dreams and have just shot up. They are already tall enough to reach the trellis. Indeed, my concern for their safety has been mounting as I've spied several fearless jackrabbits puttering around the yard. The last thing I want is for them to discover the veritable salad bar that is my little vegetable garden.

So the other night I got down to business and built a little more protection for my peas. The trouble is, I'm not particularly handy, and even though I was working with bamboo garden rods and green garden netting, it was still a project and a half to construct.
For one thing, I kept getting tangled up in the netting. Another trouble was I didn't have any garden tape; so fixing everything together was a challenge. Eventually I figured it all out and now, I hope that the peas have a safe home to continue to grow and eventually bear lots of sweet pods.

I also discovered that all is not lost with the scarlet runner beans on the other trellis. There are three (yes three!) little shoots that have started to come up. As soon as I saw them my chest puffed up with pride and I went over to beam at my little bean sprouts. They are going to be beautiful when they grow up.

I hope there are lots of bright red flowers and that they bloom after the lilacs have all come and gone. Right now the scent of these lilac bushes under the front windows wafts all the way up to my bedroom window. As you approach my front door, you are immediately undone by them. They are intoxicating. Lilacs are magnificent flowers. When mine are in full bloom, the colour is so intense that they seem to be blooming just for the world to know what lilacs ought to look and smell like.

Salad greens continue to grow slowly. They get quite a bit of shade from the big stupid air conditioning unit that sits in the middle of the garden. Some day that thing will get moved and then there will be so much room to grow things here. In the meantime, the butter crunch lettuce is coming along nicely. I will have to thin them out soon, but I want to wait to see which ones are the strongest. The arugula may have been discovered. I feel like there are less little green guys here than last week. Maybe all the rain and then the one intense day of sun burned them up.

I think the slow bolt cilantro is starting to come up in the back herb box. The tulips are mostly done blooming, except for a few remarkable crimson ones I planted last fall. I want more of them and more white ones for next spring.

planting a vegetable garden - stage 1

Today I planted seeds in the garden beds around my house. I did some preliminary reading in a book I picked up out east. It's called Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens. Though I didn't copy author Barbara Pleasant's garden plans precisely, there is a great deal of valuable information and useful tips to starting small but thinking long term about the use of your garden space. With lots of useful diagrams and beautiful garden photography, this book is a valuable addition to my food library.

Most of my edible plants were planted on the south side to maximize sun exposure. Tomatoes are especially fond of direct sun and heat. I'm waiting on leads for heirloom seedlings to put in after the long weekend. If you know of any nurseries nearby I would gladly promote them on my blog. I will check out the downtown farmer's market as soon as I have a work-free Saturday morning.

Other things I planted:

Lettuces risk burning their leaves if droplets remain on them as the sun comes overhead. They need a bit of morning shade. I planted Boston butter crunch and arugula behind the shade of our big stupid air conditioner and have already resown once.
Along a trellis in the yard I started sugar snap peas a week ago and then planted scarlet runner beans today. My strawberry plants took a licking from the unexpectedly hot temperatures and my ineptitude at getting outside to keep them hydrated. Some made it and I'll pay extra close attention to them, I promise. My dad replanted his rosemary plants outside after a long winter on the kitchen windowsill. They are hardy mamma jammas and I think will do even better now that they have all the extra sun and fresh air.

Around the back of the house there is a large box planter that I visited last fall with an abundance of tulip bulbs. I seem to have only used one side of the bed though, and now it is home to my little herb garden. Today I planted Genovese basil, slow-bold cilantro, Greek oregano, and garlic chives. The chives have incredibly aromatic purple flowers when they go to seed. I don't know if the oregano will mature this year. It might do better next summer, but the seeds are in the ground at least. I am very excited for the basil. This varietal produces big sweet leaves that make amazing pesto if your crop does well. I think I want to pick up some mint and sage too. There is a bit of room yet in the box and the tulips wont mind.

I'll keep you posted on whatever comes up and any more additions I make to the garden. Maybe some nightshades... or some sunflowers. In the meantime, get out and enjoy the sunshine!

everything in its season

I love the farmer's market. As a child I remember the summer market held at the Pavilion at Seba Beach, where my family has a cabin. The cavernous hall seemed to go on forever, the crush of people forced me along in a current of feverish and frantic cries for carrots, onions, and pyrogies. Every saturday my mother would give me a small bill to get something for myself while she rushed around beating all the other eager city-dwellers to the finest of all the fresh local fare. As I grew up I became a more integral part of the saturday market ritual - splitting up with my mother and aunt as we raced to different corners of the now-smaller Pavilion, racing against the yoga moms and old ladies for the last head of leaf lettuce or bag of baby russet potatoes. One of my favourite things from the farmer's market was always the beef jerkey, to be sure a deep-seated Albertan attribute. While my aunt rushed for the home made mennonite cinnamon twists, my mom and I preferred our own baking, saving our money for the things we could not make ourselves, namely BC fruit and local vegetables.
Now, as an adult, I have had a chance to grow my own vegetables in a backyard garden. I laughed when I saw my boyfriend's ridiculous rabbit-proof fence, arguing that such small creatures could hardly be expected to do as much damage as a fortification such as this necessitated. I was sadly mistaken. Every seed, every shoot, every fruit set that was not guarded by some form of fence fell victim to the rodent freedom fighters that attempted to root us out of their territory. I was astounded by just how much work goes into tending and protecting a little urban vegetable garden. But I was so proud, and even more so astounded by the miracle of nature. Watching these little leaves and shoots materialize from seed, earth, sun, and water seemed to me, and still does, an experience that no one should miss out on.
Self-sufficiency is a terribly misunderstood commodity. When it came down to it, before I kept that little garden, I could call myself self-sufficient if I was able to work to afford fresh local vegetables. Until I had actually done the work to grow my food myself, I was in denial about the extent to which I could provide for myself if called to do so.
Once again my mother and I returned to the farmer's market. This time, though, I went with her to the Strathcona Farmer's Market, located year round in the building just off Whyte Ave. The once-gigantic Pavilion at Seba Beach now seems small by comparison, with many of the vendors now opting to sell their stuffs in the city instead. At this big city market, everything from the standards:BC fruit, local vegetable farmers, and craftspeople can be found. What I love about this market is the multiple organic meat and produce vendors now popping up. As far as prepared food goes, they have come a long way from the cinnamon twisties of my childhood. Homemade pita and gourmet dips, fancy stuffed olives, and ethnic foods of all kinds send up delcious aromas that mix with the smells of fresh dirt, green beans, and fried onions.
I don't really know what to conclude from this other than commiting myself to return to these markets as often as I can, throughout my life, and to welcome new people to the wonderful world of locally farmed food. I suppose my life-long love of markets got its start right here, as I tucked into a dinner of Alberta lamb, Taber corn, and home made BC blueberry pie.