We've been cooking

Quite often I will tweet photos of our dinner - usually it's Dan's cooking - and they are always met with enthusiastic replies. Here are a few recent photos of the meals we have prepared at home.

 In the small dish on the left above is pureed carrots and I forget what spices - this was actually a couple of weeks ago now. The skewer has pork in a mustard yogurt dill sauce.

 Sam always knows when it's time for dinner.

We got a Costco membership a couple of weeks ago and I was able to buy some beloved staples from when I lived with my friends in Cowichan Bay, including artichoke hearts and Kalamata olives. This salad also has walnuts, spring greens, feta, and black pepper. I have had this very salad almost every day for the past two weeks, I love it so much. 

Cheesy broccoli soup! Another Costco impulse, even though we are only two people it's hard not to succumb to the allure of a massive amount of vegetables for such a low price (normally we buy mostly organic, I swear), but we have to make sure we eat them before they go off. The spirals are lavash and salmon from Trader Joe's, and I can't remember what other toppings Dan put on there. Olives, I think.


More to come next week!

an update with photos

I had a post written that I was going to post on Monday, but it seems somehow obsolete now. Instead, I'll just show you a bunch of photos and insert commentary.


Dan and I don't usually do anything special on Valentine's Day. We figure we have so much love in our life every day that to devote only one day to it seemed silly. We don't need commercial excuses to go out for dinner or do nice things for each other. So what ended up happening is that Dan picked me up and brought me back to the tap room while he did some stuff. I hung out, knitting (an easy project) while Sean the tap room manager poured me beer.  Oatmeal Porter, in particular. It was good. I had great conversations with a number of people about knitting, gardening, food, and pouring concrete.

Later Dan took me to one of Kinston's three Mexican restaurants for dinner. I am still not accustomed to the volume of food they give you in restaurants here.



Earlier in the day I had decided to make a little Valentine's decoration. I happened to have some love-colored card stock from when I was sending out heart butterflies last year, strung the hearts together with some yarn, and voila! A romantic gesture. Dan thought it was sweet.

 Dan recently acquired a musical saw. Did you know that there was such a thing? As in a saw made by Stradivarius and other makers of fine instruments? Well, Dan is one of those people who can just pick up an instrument and figure it out. He can play any sort of wind instrument (he played low brass in high school and university), and has been earnestly playing his banjo since he's been in North Carolina. He even built a canjo (banjo made from a can) and put up a YouTube video (flounderguts). Back to the saw, Dan was finding it a bit hard to handle at the end so, you know, he just whipped one up. He had a bit of mahogany laying around, zip zip on the bandsaw, a turn of the lathe, then attach it to the saw. As he was doing this, I tweeted it. It got noticed by Natalia Paruz, The Saw Lady. (Seriously, go check out her story, it's so inspirational!) 

(I am still trying to convince Dan that we should go to New York in June. I think that would be awesome. I have never been to New York).


In other news, I mentioned previously that we'll be having a St. Patrick's Day party. Dan's plan for the event is to make Corned Beef and Cabbage, one of the meals he prepares that are my favorite. On Saturday, we drove out to New Bern to meet a new friend and to do a bit of exploring. We had lunch at Spunky McDoogle's. 

 Yeah it was a bit kitschy but who doesn't love kitsch? It was on our way back that it started snowing, as I mentioned in my last post, so we headed back to Kinston.

The next day, since Dan couldn't go outside and work on the Dodge (cold, wet), we decided to take a trip to Goldsboro, about 35 miles from here. Since we had been expecting to move into our house by now (I mean come on, what is taking so long?), we hadn't unpacked our boxes of books from the truck. Dan wrapped each box in saran wrap before we left Canada. Dan covered the truck with a tarp the night it snowed but even with that, some of the boxes were wet. WE PANICKED.

 We brought all the books to the storage area at the brewery and unpacked/checked for damage. It wasn't as bad as we thought. It would really have sucked to have been carrying these books around all these years and then 3,600 miles only to lose them to a night of water damage. A few of the paperbacks were wrinkled but it was mostly the boxes that took the hit.

  I should add too that it was late Saturday night/Sunday morning that I got the message that my mum's aunt Mid passed away. She was 86 I think, had lost her husband (Unc) of 63 years in 2010 and immediately fell into dementia when he passed. She had a fall last year sometime and was put into a care home, but the stubborn old gal hung on I guess, until these last few weeks when she decided to leave. Mid and Unc were surrogate grandparents for me and my sister, since my mum's mom died when I was in grade 5 (1984?) and Grandpa died in 1992. Mid was the record keeper of the family, the one who kept in touch with everyone and always remembered every birthday. Her passing was not a sad one, but one of joy, since she can finally be together with her beloved. I can't help but think she was waiting for me to move to the US and get settled here so I wouldn't feel obliged to attend her funeral, as I have no doubt that the family shit will start flying soon. What better time to open old wounds and fling accusations than when a family matriarch has died? Yup, I'll be happy to avoid all that. My mum and sister will go to the funeral this Saturday in Kelowna, BC. I'll wait for news.

Right. On to happier things. Below is a photo of a chandelier that Dan built for the distillery. I don't think it is rigged up with lights just yet, but I believe it will have LEDs in it. The ceiling is made of recycled barrel staves and the wall made of recycled pallets.





This is the entrance/exit to Dan's office. Up by steep ladder/stair, down via slide.




Now that Dan and I are back together, we can eat meals together again. He's a great cook, did I tell you? Dan makes the best salads.

St. Patrick's Day adventures

so...

A friend of mine stayed overnight on Friday, which meant we had all of Saturday for exploration and adventure. Now that I've been on this part of the Island for a few months, I've gotten to know a bit of the terrain and investigate a few of the interesting places. It's fun to hang out with a friend and do some exploring, checking out places neither of us had been to!

Our first stop was Cowichan Bay village. It's small and parking is hard to find even in the winter, but we managed. Cow Bay has lots of interesting little shops to offer, including True Grain Bread and Hilary's Cheese, as well as the Udder Guy Ice Cream. We popped into the Spinning Ninny and found the proprietress needle felting mustaches. 

We had a lovely exchange with her about ideas for future moustaches. My friend is a creative, and she had lots of great ideas for themes and names of moustaches-on-sticks. 

I didn't catch the gal's name but I strongly encouraged her to get on Twitter - if she was tweeting stuff like this and had an etsy shop, she would be making money hand over fist! (Maybe she is - her stock was almost completely different from when I was there last month - and that's in the winter.

Then we headed into Duncan. Duncan used to be this run down sleepy little town that wasn't very interesting, but over the years it has gotten to be a mecca of young families, new farmers, people wanting to live the organic and sustainable lifestyle. It's cheaper than the city (i.e. Victoria) and offers all services, located in the beautiful Cowichan Valley where there is a huge local food movement. Duncan has lots of neat little shops downtown, some of which I had never been to, and it was fun to explore. 

Sadly I didn't think to take more photos on our blog-able adventure, but I will say we went into a few antique shops, a few second-hand stores, and the photos below show the pot of gold we found at The Celtic Connection. It was St. Patrick's Day, after all, we *had* to go in! They were serving tea & scones with jam and freshly hand-whipped cream. They were doing a good business that day, people buying hats and T-shirts for their later festive engagements. We entered the draw for prizes but I don't think we won. We had to guess how many gold-covered pieces of chocolate were in the pot (yes, regretting not taking a photo) - I guessed 187, my friend guessed two hundred something. O well.

It turns out that it was also the first day of the Duncan Farmer's Market!We rolled in ten minutes before closing, but it was good to see all the vendors full of cheer and glad to be back doing the market scene.

We then headed into Victoria, to have a growler of Hoyne Brewing's Dark Matter filled up. As we were about to enter, my friend ran into a couple she knows, who happen to live in Cowichan Bay. While we were inside, a couple I knew came in! There must have been something in the air... I dropped my friend off and headed back up Island.

After the overindulgence the night before, I was fine with not having a big St. Patty's day bash. I think we all even went to bed early that night. I had a great time with my dear friend, chatting about all sorts of things. When I got back to Backyard Feast, I was ravenous and delighted that we had so many leftovers from the night before! I reminded her to please send me the link for the recipe for the awesome salad that she brought - you all must try this! Kale and Brussels Sprouts Salad  It's SO good you'll want to eat it every day for a week!

what a week it has been

It's hard to believe that a week ago I was on the way back to the Island with Dan. That two weeks ago, I figured by now I will be settling into my new life in North Carolina.

Well, if there is one virtue that Dan and I share, it is our adaptability. We seem to be able to cope well in a crisis and to support each other in times of need. Yes getting rejected at the border sucks. So did having the cat try to wriggle her way out of her harness at a roadside stop, forcing me to clamp down on her hard lest she run away and climb up a tree in the forest. This left me with deep gashes, bleeding, with a torn (favourite) shirt, and a wicked bruise on my knee. But I was not going to risk losing my cat. I'm mostly recovered from my lacerations, and the bruise is getting smaller.

As I'm getting used to the idea of being here at least until Christmas, I am actually excited about the things I can do while I'm here. On the top of my list is visit all my friends. That alone could take until Christmas! (I am so lucky). I'll spend all of next week looking for jobs and I expect to have at least one offer by the end of the week - there are tons of jobs in Victoria right now. While it would be great to get a job in health informatics research or at least something to do with writing, I can do just about anything I set my mind do. Mountain Equipment Co-op (Canada's REI) is hiring.

Dan and I were walking around in downtown Victoria today. Oddly enough, that's something we haven't spent much time doing. When we lived in Victoria and East Sooke, our downtown Victoria experience was largely just parking somewhere and going to a restaurant. We love food, after all. Today we decided to go down to Munro's Books, a long-standing institution of Victoria. Again! We made off not having spent any money but I have decided on the slow cooker book I want - the one by America's Test Kitchen. When half of the house's current inhabitants clear out in the next few days, I will set to my cooking experiments.

I don't know what it is, but I can't stop thinking about food. As in cooking, technique, and gourmet flavours. Dan has been experimenting with food and watching all those cooking programs for years and I was the happy guinea pig for all his experiments. This last week since we've been together in a food lover's paradise, I too am taking a ravenous interest in honing my skills. I'm already thinking about what the family might have for Christmas dinner (our Pizza Christmas was a hit in 2009). I guess Dan and I have been able to distill what is really important to us in our life, which is each other, and food. Would the family be okay with okonomiyaki for Christmas dinner? What about a line-up of slow cooker dishes? Thinking, thinking...

Oh, Munro's. It's such a great book store. I love Bolen, for it's massive selection and proximity to bathrooms (it's in a mall), but Munro's has a more focused selection, not chosen for mass appeal but for the discerning reader. There were easily five books in the cooking section I could have walked away with. I also had a chance to see Melissa Morgan-Oakes' newest book about knitting socks toe-up 2-at-a-time. I learned how to knit socks with her first book, so I'm a big MMO fan.

But I can't buy stuff right now. Can't. Need an income first. Victoria has so much to offer to people who have money. I'm not even allowing any yarn shop indulgences until I can confidently pay my bills. But when I do have a bit of extra cash for my knitting habit, I will need things like a shawl pin, some buttons, some Trekking and Wollmeise yarn. It would be nice to someday be able to afford enough nice yarn for a sweater - I've never knit a sweater for myself before.

Which brings me to Christmas again. It's terrible. I usually start thinking about Christmas in July - as in what I will knit for everyone. I don't need to knit for everyone (and in truth, this year, if I do have money, I have some fabulous gift ideas for everyone. It's very helpful to live under the same roof as someone to know what they would appreciate as gifts). I just like knitting. For everyone. And that might mean the projects for myself get set aside until Selfish Knitting Season (in January).

While we were in Mountain Equipment Co-op, Dan encouraged me to look at winter coats. I don't have one. Not any more. Got rid of all my cold weather stuff in anticipation of moving to a hot climate. I found one I like, and as it happens, it is only $145.

I fit into a size Medium! I didn't want a black one, but I wasn't fond of the plum colour, so black will have to do. I will have to wait until November to buy it (money) because today we bought me new running shoes.

We went to Frontrunners and I must have tried on 14 pairs. I have had bunion surgery on both feet, one of which is coming back, and my feet are wide. They are also pronating slightly so I need a bit of arch support. I tried on every suitable women's runner that came in a wide size, and they were all too tight. Tried a few men's and voila! A perfect fit of asics. Turns out they were the cheapest pair.  Not only that, but with the Victoria Marathon happening this weekend, I got an extra 20% off. I will keep a log of how many miles I put on these shoes, because marathon runners advise that after 300-500 miles, shoes need replacing. I have never suffered any real running injury, and would like to keep it that way, so I follow all the advice of the marathon runners that have come before. I am determined to run a marathon before I turn 39 in 2013. Join me?

Corned Beef & Cabbage

Ok this might not look very good to you but to me it is something I have been bugging Dan to make for weeks, something I look forward to and get excited about. Corned beef and cabbage. He made this for me for the first time when we were living in East Sooke, and I don't remember liking it that much. Dan may not have figured out how to do it so well at that point, but the couple of times he's made it here in Ucluelet he has absolutely nailed it. I couldn't really tell you how it's prepared, I just know that it needs about three or four hours. Is is boiled? What spices?

What I like about this meal, particularly now that I'm losing weight, is that this meal is only 300 calories. The fat is basically boiled or steamed out of the beef and I think the veggies are boiled or steamed in this same water. It has a vingegar-like astringent taste that I just love. Sometimes Dan makes it with carrots and yams as well as cabbage and potatoes, but it is always full-on flavour. It packs well as leftovers and when I am eating my leftover lunch in the hospital lunch room, my coworkers are all jealous. :-)