Category Archives: Eat

Last night’s union talk and dinner at our home was crazy-successful….. an event that started out early and went late, ending with some hot-tubbing and cherry pie at midnight. About twenty people crammed into our small living room, and it was apparent to me that disenchanted as some of our activists may be, there is still a deep desire to explore the possibilities a new union and/or union movement…We already have agreement from someone to come and talk in September, so we will be working out the details of that shortly and going ahead with a little intimate series of discussions (and dinners) in our home.

Dinner last night was burgers (beef, lamb and veggie) with all the fixings, potato salad and pickles… plus a new kale recipe that I whipped up in an effort to use up the snow peas from the garden that were about to get too big for their own good. This turned out to be a definite keeper:

Conversation and Kale Salad

2 cups of shitaake mushrooms
5 garlic scapes
5 mid-sized curly Kale leaves
1 pound of snow peas
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
black sesame seeds

Dressing: rice vinegar, sunflower oil, sesame oil, juice of one orange

In advance, cut into pieces and cook the shitaake mushrooms and garlic scapes in sesame oil and a touch of soy sauce. Let cool.

Kale leaves should be cut very thin, with the ribs taken out. Snow peas may be cut into two or three sections.

Mix cooled mushrooms and scapes, shredded kale leaves, snow peas and sunflower seeds in a big salad bowl.

Mix dressing to your taste – the base is rice vinegar and sunflower oil with sesame oil being added in very small quantity for flavoring.

Toss the salad in the dressing, sprinkle black sesame seeds and a little salt on top – and you will have a pretty amazing salad to go with your summer grilling!

Our friends Blaine and Maureen showed up last night for dinner and an overnight stay (they live in London these days) – which is a pleasure we get about every six months when they are home visiting family. Even more exciting than the dinner was the new tech project they demonstrated for me last night (he is a programmer, she a poet – this is some interesting terrain) – but sadly I am not at liberty to share anything about that project right now, as its launch is still a few weeks off and I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

What I can share with you, however, is the pizza we ate for dinner – all local from the farmer’s market, the fishmonger and our garden – with fresh-picked, in-season ingredients.

The first pizza involved shredded mozzeralla for the base, topped with fresh basil, stawberries and bocconcini slices (pictured below). Once it was baked (in the oven for about 40 minutes at 375 degrees), I topped it with a balsamic reduction that set off the sweetness in the strawberries and went wonderfully with the melted cheese.

The second pizza had a caramelized onion relish base, and was topped with kale and maple-smoked salmon (also known as indian candy) and fresh-grated asiago.

Both of these pizzas were a lovely blend of sweet and savory and I honestly can’t tell you which one I liked more (well, maybe the strawberry one – but the smoked salmon was so good!)

Drinks: sparkling white wine with rhubarb-apricot cordial and beers.
Side: Ceasar Salad (romaine from our garden)
Dessert: Cardamom ice cream with saskatoon berries and raspberries on top.

It was all very pleasing…. but as I said, the conversation still outshone the food… which I will tell you more about as soon as I am allowed. In the meantime, think summer ingredients for pizza – a nice alterantive to BBQ and easy to make vegetarian!

I promise no talk about the weather except to say that it is grey in Vancouver at the moment – much like it is every year in early June – and instead of moping about it I have devised the perfect recipe for bottling sunshine. Inspired by this recipe, some so-so canning from last year, and a hailstorm on the weekend – I introduce to you:

Rhubarb-Apricot Cordial!

12 cups chopped rhubarb (mine was flattened by hail necessitating a harvest)
5 cups of home-canned apricots plus their syrup (The apricots I put up last year were too soft to be used for anything but sauce)
6 cups of sugar, plus more to taste

1. Put prepared rhubarb in a stainless steel pot and sprinkle a cup of sugar over. Leave for an hour or until the rhubarb starts releasing juice.
2. Strain the apricots, reserving the liquid.
3. Add the apricots to the pot and turn the heat on medium.
4. While the rhubarb/apricot mixture is cooking down into a mush, prepare a colander with a cheesecloth or another clean straining cloth (I just use a thin cotton table covering that would otherwise be cut up for rags). Pour the reserved liquid from the apricots through the strainer and let drip.
5. Once the rhubarb/apricot mixture is cooked into a mush, take it off the oven and let it cool a bit. Then dump that into the colander. Leave overnight to drip through.
6. The next day, prepare your boiling water canner and sterilize your jars. At the same time, put the strained juice into your stainless steel pot and add five cups of sugar. Turn the heat onto medium until the sugar melts. Bring the mixture to a boil for one minute or so after that, and then turn down the heat again. The thicker you want the cordial mixture, the longer you cook it. In my case I only cooked it for about 10 minutes total.
7. Pour into canning jars and process for 10 minutes. This recipe makes 2 1/2 quarts (five pint jars worth)

Also! Another recipe from yesterday involves fresh, local strawberries and basil – both of which showed up at Donald’s Market this week:

Strawberries and basil

2 cups sliced strawberries
5 large basil leaves sliced small
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup sugar

Mix all ingredients together, let sit on the counter for an hour or more to macerate. Serve over vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt. Amazing!

And finally, while we are invoking the sun here on the west coast, I direct you to the Ray Bradbury short story All Summer in a Day which encapsulates so much of what rainforest life is like on a deep psychic level. RIP Ray Bradbury – your stories have nourished our fantastical and darker impulses for all these decades and you will be missed.