Archive for the 'delicious' Category

365 : 24

Published
by
Karyn
on January 26, 2010
in 365 and delicious
. 4 Comments

365 : 24

365 : cinnamon & rosewater macarons

I have a mild obsession with vintage tins right now. This led me to get up early Sunday morning and bike (in January!) over to the St. Lawrence Antique Market. I met up with Dominic and we looked for treasure. True to my mission, I scooped up a bunch of tins.

Afterward, we stopped into Petite Thuet for a quick bite. I had a wonderful flaky pastry with sliced apples and couldn’t resist taking home a couple of their macarons. I especially loved the cinnamon flavour! I don’t actually like rosewater, but it was so pretty and pink that I had to get it too. I’m happy to say it was really delicious.

The macarons in this photo are actually sitting on top of one of the tins I got, but you’d never know it. I guess I owe you some vintage tin photos!

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365 : 5

Published
by
Karyn
on January 7, 2010
in 365 and delicious
. 6 Comments

365 : 5

365 : neverending holiday treats

For weeks and maybe months after Christmas there seems to be unlimited chocolates, candies and cookies. I have a large stash of toasted coconut chocolate bars in my bedside table. It’s heaven for me.

p.s. I know a lot of you have asked, Reva had her baby on December 21. It’s a boy. His name is Orso and he’s pretty adorable. When I meet him, I’ll take some photos to share with you.

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FRENCH CHOCOLATE GRANOLA

Published
by
Karyn
on December 1, 2009
in delicious and reading
. 9 Comments

French Chocolate Granola

FRENCH CHOCOLATE GRANOLA
recipe by Orangette

I’ve been meaning to tell you about this for ages. Every time I make a batch of this granola, I’ll take some photos and then get distracted by some other crafty thing to post about. Enough is enough, let’s talk about granola.

I actually used to think that it was silly to make your own granola. I thought it took too long, cost too much and why make it when you can buy perfectly good granola. This is coming from someone would make pretty much rather make absolutely everything in life myself, if possible. Well, I was very wrong. Making your own granola is the best, especially this one.

The recipe comes from my favourite food blog, Orangette. When I read the name, I imagined it to be my kind of breakfast. Chocolate for breakfast sounds like a great idea. It’s also the easiest thing to make. The wonderful thing about granola is that you can’t really go wrong, if there’s something you want to add to the recipe (dried cranberries, wheat germ, etc) just throw it in.

This recipe is pretty perfect, but I do make a couple tiny changes when I make it. Instead of vegetable oil, I use roasted hazelnut oil. It adds a lovely nutty flavour. I also use demerara sugar and double the amount of coconut. The other thing I usually do when I’m making a batch, is to mix a second batch together with just the dry ingredients and store it until I run out of my current batch. (which happens really quickly) Making that second batch takes no time all and you’ll be quite excited by that when your stash of granola has run out.

I should also take a minute to just gush about Orangette, Molly Wizenberg and her book, “A Homemade Life”. Molly’s blog is so engaging and delightful. Are you reading it? Oh, you should be. She spins lovely tales of her life and memories and then she throws in a recipe that makes you absolutely hungry. I read her book during the summer and again, I meant to tell you all about how much I loved it. Her writing translates so perfectly into book format. I found myself fixing up a little snack or breakfast and enjoying a chapter or two everyday out in the backyard, savouring every single word. I can’t say enough good things about Molly. I just spotted a quick pasta recipe this morning on her blog that I might need to make. Today.

I’m so glad we finally had this talk.

French Chocolate Granola

French Chocolate Granola

French Chocolate Granola

French Chocolate Granola

French Chocolate Granola

French Chocolate Granola

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MISC. SEVEN

Published
by
Karyn
on October 30, 2009
in delicious and misc.
. 2 Comments

cookies by nikole

For the shop’s anniversary, the lovely ladies who work here gifted me with some incredible cookies that spelled out the sweetest message. If that wasn’t enough, I found out that the cookies were made by the deliciously talented Nikole. Too much!

It’s Friday, which seems like the perfect day to post a slew of my favourite links from the last month. What better way to ease through the work day and daydream over the weekend?

  • ok, joy the baker. i will try your easy no roll pie crust, but if i learn to bake pies, i might never eat anything else.
  • so excited about denyse schmidt’s new quilt patterns – there’s a little sneak peek on her site
  • i like this! mud is the medium.

Have a super weekend. I’m working on a new section for the blog that I think you’re going to like. Check back on Monday!

cookies by nikole

cookies by nikole

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QUILT MARKET : PART ONE

Published
by
Karyn
on October 19, 2009
in delicious, the workroom and traveling
. 7 Comments

Perfect Bunny in Cincinnati

I was super lucky last weekend to tag along to Quilt Market in Houston Texas with Jacqueline and Chris from Soak. (Guess which cute bunny tagged along with me!) I’ve been curious to check out this huge trade show and quilt festival since I opened the workroom.

Funny thing is, this first post has nothing to do with the fabric or the quilts!

We left insanely early on Friday morning to catch a 6am flight. We had a stop over in Cincinnati and then got detoured to Austin because of bad weather. I actually really wanted to go to Austin, but all I got to see this time was the rainy tarmac from the open door of our tiny aircraft as we got extra fuel to make it to Houston.

I’ve never been to Texas and I was hoping for warm weather, but it was cold and rainy the whole time. I had packed my bathing suit for the trip, but didn’t even make it up to see the rooftop pool at our hotel.

One of the tricky things with traveling is finding good local food. I’ll admit that I didn’t do any research on Houston before the trip, so I certainly wasn’t prepared with any suggestions. By some chance, both Jacqueline and I spotted a cute looking restaurant outside the downtown core on a cab ride back to the hotel Friday night. I had the good sense to write down the name, T’afia, so that we could check it out online later.

Saturday night was the famous Moda dinner party. We had originally planned on going to this free dinner. After a bit of thought we made the best decision of the trip and made a reservation at T’afia instead.

Beet Brownie with Honey Comb & Blue Cheese

If you ever go to Houston, you must visit T’afia. T’Afia is owned by Monica Pope and the focus is all local. Every Saturday morning they host a farmers market in their parking lot and develop their menus based on what’s available. It was one of the best meals that I can ever remember having. Absolutely everything we had from start to finish was delightful, including the service. It was so good that we wanted to return on Sunday night so that we could keep eating through the menu. I wanted to try EVERYTHING. Sadly, they are closed both Sundays and Mondays.

I’m listing what I had for dinner because I really don’t want to forget it.

  • Medjool dates stuffed with chorizo, wrapped in bacon
  • Butter lettuce, radicchio & cucumbers, pinenut, goat cheese, sherry walnut vinaigrette
  • Yaokum Co. flat iron steak, roasted sweet potatoes, miso sauce
  • Texas cheese selection: veldhuizen bosque blue & gruyere and paula’s hoja santa with house crackers and panforte
  • Beet brownie with honeycomb and blue cheese
  • Inwood Estates Tempranillo/Cabernet Sauvignon

Before we left, we coerced our kind waiter at T’afia to give us a list of his recommended restaurants for our Sunday night dinner. We picked a Texas BBQ joint, Beaver’s. When we met up with Heather Bailey and her husband Isaac during the day, we invited them to have dinner with us. They brought along their friends Joey and Jona of Fabritopia. My mind is a blur of what we talked about during dinner but it was super fun and filled with laughs. Heather and I both tackled the ‘Pit boss Chickwhich’ sandwich for dinner (All-natural smoked shredded chicken made sloppy with “Ring of Fire” BBQ sauce, a fried egg, crispy cornmeal onions, cole slaw and pickle) and for dessert we all shared Candied Bacon Ice Cream, Brown Butter Ice Cream and Brownie Balls (Fried brownies, peanut butter and vanilla ice cream).

I have to tell you, I would go back to Quilt Market again just for all this delicious food. That’s not to say the fabrics were not amazing. They were! The next post is all about the fabric. Check out the first slide show of my trip…

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

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CANNING TOMATOES : PART TWO

Published
by
Karyn
on September 9, 2009
in delicious
. 15 Comments

Bushel of San Marzano Tomatoes

Gayla had mentioned that Fiesta Gardens was selling bushels of San Marzano tomatoes that were perfect for canning. Pumped up from the canning workshop, I got it into my head that I might attempt to can some tomatoes on my own. I had an extra day off over the Labour Day weekend, so Sunday we drove over to the nursery and picked up a bushel. Actually, Andrew picked it up (literally), hauled it into the car, into our backyard and washed all 300ish tomatoes.

Once you have that many tomatoes in your possession you are committed to doing something with them as quickly as possible. Over the course of two days, I canned 28 pint jars, made 3 bottles of homemade ketchup and oven dried four baking sheets of halved tomatoes sprinkled with sea salt.

The phrase, ’slaving in the kitchen’, certainly came to mind several times. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy myself but it’s a huge time commitment. With each batch, I became more efficient and I also fell into a good rhythm with all the different tasks that need to be done. By the end, I was pretty accurately calculating how many tomatoes to blanch and peel to fit my seven jar batch without leftovers.

The one problem I ran into was having some of the jars leak when removed from the hot water bath. This was super frustrating. I thought I hadn’t tightened the lids enough, but it happened again with the next batch. Googling the problem didn’t give me any clear insight, but luckily a quick tweet to Gayla was answered with the suggestion to leave the jars in the hot water bath a bit long to allow for a longer ‘calming’ period after the forty five minute processing time. This was exactly my problem. The very last batch was allowed to calm in the hot water for a longer period of time and they turned out perfectly.

All the jars sealed, but the ones that leaked I’ve put in the fridge for consumption now. I like the idea of preparing for winter like a squirrel and stashing away my little jars of food. I’m very much enjoying the dried tomatoes now though. The concentrated flavour is so delicious. I made myself an omelet for dinner last night with dried tomatoes, goat cheese and green onions. YUM!

A few of you have asked me if I’ve made my pear jam this year. I just received a bundle of pears from my mom, so this weekend will be all about preserving pears.

NOTE : Gayla sent me a message regarding my leaky jars, that I thought you might like to read. Canning can be a bit nerve wracking when you’re worried about potentially poisoning yourself and your loved ones. It’s great to have a mentor who gives reassuring advice.

“Personally I think the jars that sputtered will be okay. As long as they are properly sealed they will be fine and the sputtering was just that they were hissing in the water and pulled out before they had stopped. When this has happened to me I just wipe them all down carefully with a warm wet cloth so I knew they were clean before putting them away. I then check for any further leakage a day later to be sure.” Gayla also did a post today about her love affair with canning that also links to some of her great recipes.

Oven Dried Tomatoes

Oven Dried Tomatoes

Jars of Canned Tomatoes

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CANNING TOMATOES : PART ONE

Published
by
Karyn
on September 9, 2009
in delicious, gardening and the workroom
. 13 Comments

Heirloom Tomatoes

It’s a particularly fun time to shop for fruits and vegetables in Ontario. For a short period, there is an abundance of lovely locally grown produce available to us. I try to savour each peach, tomato, berry and corn on the cob. Here and there I kept hearing Gayla Trail tweet about making pickles, buying canning jars and ‘putting up’ all kinds of fruits and vegetables. It hadn’t really occurred to me that preserving some of this fresh food will allow me to enjoy it in the cold winter months. I was over the moon when Gayla agreed to share her experience and teach a workshop on Canning Heirloom Tomatoes at the workroom.

Firstly, Gayla is a fountain of incredible knowledge. Her book and website, You Grow Girl, have fostered a community of gardeners and provide endless inspiration. She is an amazing photographer (check out her ‘daily botanical‘), crafter and she lives right here, in Parkdale.

To start off the workshop, Gayla laid out a beautiful collection of her preserves, pickles and syrups. Just seeing all the colourful possibilities laid out in glass jars was enough to get me dreaming of starting my own collection. We were even allowed to sample her peaches in brandy, oven roasted tomatoes in olive oil and cherries in red wine. So delicious!

Then, it was down to work. Canning is definitely work. The jars need to be sterilized and the tomatoes need to be washed, scored, blanched, peeled and cored. Food preservation is pretty serious and safety is a major concern. As we worked on getting the tomatoes ready, we chatted and asked about a million questions. I felt that each of the students was like a sponge trying to soak up every word Gayla said.

It took us longer than expected, due to the slow heating elements on our electric stove, but we canned fourteen beautiful pint jars of tomatoes. Two jars for each student! More importantly, we learned from someone who loves canning and has been doing it for over ten years. The little tricks, words of advice and anecdotes are why I love taking classes so much. Gayla is a fantastic teacher. So much so, that I went off on my own this past weekend and bought myself a bushel of San Marzano tomatoes. (that’s over 300 tomatoes, people!)

There was an article on Saturday in the Globe & Mail about the popularity of canning right now, featuring Gayla. She also has a new book coming out in February called “Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces“, just in time for us to plan our gardens for next year. She’ll be sharing some of her recipes, including her pickles. I’m crossing my fingers hoping she might want to teach a pickling workshop. I don’t think I can wait until February to learn more of her secrets. I’m addicted.

I know for a fact that many of you are making delicious jams and pickles. Maybe you’ll share your trusted recipes?

Gayla Trail : website / flickr / shop / book / new book

Blanched & Peeled San Marzano Tomatoes

Gayla's Preserved Crab Apples & Lemons

Gayla's Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Canned Tomatoes

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PARIS : MACARONS

Published
by
Karyn
on June 13, 2009
in delicious and traveling
. 9 Comments

I only ate 8 macarons while I was in Paris. (a few made it back to Toronto and I’ve just finally finished them off)

It’s kinda crazy after fantasizing about eating them by the dozen, comparing the flavours and seriously judging them from all the different famous places. Half way through the trip I got some mild food poisoning and didn’t want to eat anything for about 24 hours. During that time we passed by Ladurée and Pierre Hermé and I couldn’t even bring myself to go in and buy some for when I was feeling better. If you know me even slightly, you will know that this is alarming behaviour. I can eat baked goods and sweets all day long and often do.

That said… YUM! I’m glad I waited until Paris to try them, they are delightful. I did try them from 3 different places. One place was just a random shop to see what the difference is between a renowned macaron and a regular one. There is a definitely a difference. The fillings on the ‘regular’ macarons seems more like jam than a flavourful filling.

The first macaron I had was framboise (raspberry) from Jean-Paul Hévin who is a well known chocolatier. The other flavours I got there were various chocolate combinations and they were also delicious. The other place I tried was Arnaud Delmontel. His creations were more colourful and the flavours more varied. Unfortunately, I let these ones get a bit smushed up carrying them around and only got one good photo (the cracked pink and white macaron below). The standout flavour for me here was the salted caramel.

Hopefully next time I’m in Paris I’ll really get to enjoy the world of macarons. For now, I’m happy to finally know what all the fuss is about.

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TATI’S ROOFTOP PATIO

Published
by
Karyn
on May 26, 2009
in delicious and local
. 5 Comments

I had my first patio outing of the season on Sunday and it was glorious. Dinner and drinks with Dominic & Cassandra on Tati’s rooftop patio. It’s almost like a tree house, as there is a huge tree growing through and around the secluded patio. The food and ambiance was just lovely. I recommend it and plan on going again and again this summer. At one point, a daring raccoon made a hilarious attempt to scamper down, but was ’shoo’d away by the wait staff. I was too busy devouring my Profiteroles to get a good photo of the little guy.

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SUNDAY

Published
by
Karyn
on May 6, 2009
in delicious and stitchery
. 11 Comments

I know, it’s Wednesday already, but I’m a slow blogger. This is one reason I’m trying out Twitter – to give little updates that are more timely. I’m finding it completely confusing so far, but if you want to follow me you’ll know precisely when the UPS guy delivers new fabrics and other possibly interesting/not interesting tidbits.

Okay, back to Sunday. I wore coloured tights for the first time! (since I was 5) This was a silly personal goal of mine this year, to finally wear a pair of turquoise tights I’ve had for ages. Done.

Then, I had two surprise visitors to the workroom Sunday afternoon. Rosalyn and Michelle bumped into each other near Sanko, picked up some treats and came by the workroom. It was an impromptu sweet treats party!

Michelle also brought along a cute embroidery book for me to look at. I’m posting photos because it’s full of awesome ideas. The book is called Embroidery Animals & Insects (ISBN 9784021904288) I really love the little embroidered felt postage stamps. I need to embroider a quilt label for my double wedding ring quilt and wish it would look like there were adorable hedgehogs crawling around my perfectly formed letters.

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