Crappy Customer Service

Your Cuisine Rocks, Sir.

A product rep once compared by job to that movie Boiler Room.  You sit at a desk, typing as fast as you can, the in and out boxes on your desk foaming with activity as you cradle the phone to your ear and negotiate another sale.  And yes, it is like that right now in our busy season.  It will be like this until Christmas.  Sitting at the computer all day makes it hard for me to come home and relax at my computer.

In the meantime, let's not talk about work anymore.  I find myself saying that more & more.

I'm not much of a savory baker but I do love pretzels.  They disappear quickly in this house because Mr. W has a huge salt tooth.  I will die of diabetes and he will die of a heart attack.  And yes, you have to boil them because they taste better.  If I could find some malt powder I could make them even better.

This book is my latest obsession.  You see all those papers sticking out?  I've barely scratched the surface of this book and there are already 100 curries I want to eat RIGHT NOW.  I bought a spice grinder today because I'm enjoying working with vast quantities of spices (I never had a coffee grinder before, we don't drink it).  Fortunately Mr. W loves Indian food as much as I do.

Earlier this week Mr. W and I made our first pilgrimage to an Asian-Caribbean grocery store.  We are fortunate in that Edmonton has a large population of Near Eastern-type folks so every unusual ingredient is within my reach.  We were directed to these stores by several of our Asian friends.  We recently met some Punjabi foodies who insisted that we go to "The Brown Store" as they call it.

Even if you don't do a lot of Indian cooking I recommend these stores to you.  I bought a full grocery bag of spices and legumes for $30.  This same bag in a regular grocery store, even if I was only buying what I could get, would've probably been $100 or more.  They stock the same spices you buy at any store as well as the exotic stuff.

I did have to laugh at one point.  We were the only um, European types in the store, and a very tall Caribbean man came out of the stock room to look at us while we were shopping.  At first I thought he was watching us for theft but now I realize he was watching us buy ingredients.

Making Off With The Goods

I just got back from visiting my parents at the farm in the bustling nowhere of Tangleflags, SK.  I've been thinking about my mom's cooking non-stop for a week now.  My mother grows more famous in the area as the best cook around as the years go by.  People eat at her house like it's their last supper.  There were three pies - a horrible pumpkin for the suckers who eat that sort of thing, saskatoon (similar to blueberry) and chocolate.

My parents live next to my aunt & uncle, who own the farm my great-grandfather claimed and settled.  Aunt & Uncle are known for taking in stray humans, dusting them off, setting them on their feet and getting them going again.  They have no children of their own but many adoptive/casual foster types that fall from their family trees.  Currently living with them is a young man of 22 who got a blow-n-go lock on his car after his first DUI.  He is lucky to be living with my uncle, who pays him to help with farm maintenance while he attends Lakeland College.  He is even more lucky to be living next to my mother; my aunt isn't much of a cook.  My dad tells me that when he gets desperate enough he hangs around until mealtime - and he'll probably have to get in line.  My mother told me she helped out with a local funeral and a man she hadn't met before asked everyone in the crowd about her and how he could get her to give up her egg salad recipe.  (Just so you know, dude, there IS no recipe.  She just does whatever and it turns out amazing.)

My dad likes to tease people who show up with the intent of sticking around for eats by pretending to be upset at second helpings.  "It's easy for you," said one of the strays.  "You live in The Cookie Factory!"  And I agree, he's had the benefit of her combination of skill and natural talent for nearly 47 years, so he can just relax when I go into their cool room and start rummaging for canned pears and relishes.

We'll See Who Dies First

Lately it seems that I am bombarded by finger-shaking weirdos telling me how diet soda is going to kill me and my family.  So, finger-shaking weirdos, where is your scientific evidence to this effect?  Huh?

What's that?  You don't HAVE any proof that diet soda is dangerous to anything other than tooth enamel?  Well fuck off then!  Fuck right off and let me enjoy my ONE can a day in fucking peace. 

I don't drink coffee and my stomach can't tolerate tea in the early morning.  I don't believe in caffeinating myself up to the ceiling to make up for sleep deprivation, either.  I get 7-8 hours every night.  So, if I like to have ONE Diet Coke in the morning to help me focus on my repetitive job, there is nothing wrong with it. 

I also enjoy soda's palate-cleansing effect, which makes food more enjoyable.  Show me a calorie-free, naturally derived drink with these same properties and I'll embrace it.

What really chaps my ass is when the person shaking their finger in my face about the Diet Coke is a smoker.  There's a real champion debating move, asshole.

August FOTM

In retrospect it's easier for me to think about what I've eaten in the month previous than it is to figure out what I'm going to eat.

August is easy, of course.  There is plenty of selection around here.  Many places south of us will have moved through their peak summer fruit season by now but our growing season starts later, so all those tender summer berries reach their peak in August. 

Our blueberries come to us from the Fraser Valley in BC, where the land is carpeted in their bushy plants.  It is like paradise there in the summer and if you can afford to live there I congratulate you.  Blueberries grow here too - I planted a couple of cold-hardy dwarf varieties in my small garden and was rewarded with a couple of handfuls straight off the bush.  Wild blueberries are always the best tasting ones, if you can find them.

Most blueberry growers mix a couple of varieties in their boxes to give the best of both worlds - the meatiness of the big berries and the intense, sour taste of the tiny ones.  This is about three pounds of berries in a big bowl up there and they were gone in a matter of hours.  I think this is our collective favourite fruit, Mr. W and I.  I can eat a hundred and ask for a hundred more.

July FOTM

I have reached the point in my recovery where sitting down for long periods of time doesn't make me scream, so I'm getting around to the Fruit of the Month.  Oh, and I lost my camera in the house for a week because of the giant pile of power tools & lumber at my back door.  Now that we have a shed, we have a place to store stuff outdoors (we don't have a garage).  Everything has to be brought inside at night or it will get nicked.

Anyhoo - on with the show.

I had trouble picking one fruit for July, since it's the peak of the local fruit season.  I always have a soft spot for BC cherries, though.  I hunted high and low for two weeks before seeing a single bag!  All our stores had Washington cherries, which are fine, but I'll take my fruit from this side of the border if I can get it.

My husband loves to remind me of the time I went overboard on the USS BC Cherry.  A friend of mine loves garage sales but he was alone in his enjoyment.  He used to bribe myself and another friend to keep him company in his peregrinations by buying us a Slurpee or something along the way, and in return we'd try not to razz his purchases (much).  One day he stopped at a BC fruit stand and bought us each a sack of cherries.  We rode around in his car for three hours, spitting pits out the windows while he shopped.  I hit the bottom of the bag, which meant that I ate nearly a kilo of cherries.  Three hours later I was laying on our couch groaning and clutching my stomach.  Oh, I paid for those cherries, I did.  All the way down!

I didn't eat them for at least a year after that but I missed their meatiness.  It only takes a handful to satisfy me now.

June FOTM

Now June, June's easy.  It's the peak of everything.  The fruit stands come out of the woodwork with their deliveries from British Columbian tree-grown plenty.  But I pass up the many choices there to discuss a fruit that is, recently, available year-round.

Where do wintertime watermelons come from?  The intense growing conditions lead me to think of South America.  Still, I can't bring myself to buy a watermelon outside of their season - it just ain't right.  Perhaps it's about anticipation.  Or a watermelon loses something, being trucked through -40C weather to its destination.

I am an expert picker-outer of the tastiest watermelons and I never go wrong.  I think I've written about the subject before, but it must've been on my LiveJournal blog, therefore it is lost in the mists of time and I can write about it again.  Feel free to roll your eyes at any time.

1.  There must be a good contrast in the skin.  Dark green and bright green stripes, not pale green and paler green.

2.  There is a pale spot where the watermelon rested on the ground as it grew.  This should be a buttery colour, not white.

3.  When you gently tap on the surface of an uncut watermelon, it should thrum against your fingers.  If it does not, it could be dried out and hollow in the centre.

The watermelon above was damn good.  Mr. W discovered a new way to bring it home from the grocery store without bumping around the trunk - my delicate baby is resting on my neck pillow, which is otherwise employed during long road trips since I'm susceptible to road hypnosis as a passenger.

I believe it's best eaten cold, which is a heresy to some.  Don't mess with it, either.  Don't put it in recipes or blend it into drinks.  Just eat it one inch-thick section at a time and don't stop until your stomach hurts.

Oh, and as I said before - WASH your baby with soap and water when you get it home.  It keeps the food poisoning away...trust me.

The Meta-Post

May FOTM

Why do we underestimate the lemon (pictured here in its handy-dandy keeper purchased at Safeway)?  If I could only eat one fruit for the rest of my life it would most likely be the lemon.  It is versatile and can cheer us with its mere presence.  I have them in my house as a staple, having given up on ReaLemon during last year's lemon shortage.  For some reason, the processed stuff was unavailable but "real" lemons were plentiful.  Now I won't be without them.

I put lemon in all my water drinks, not only because it tastes good but it keeps the cats out of them when my back is turned.  All my cats hate lemons, which is quite common.  Otherwise I turn back and someone is dipping a paw into my drink to fish out the ice.  I also put lemon in my tea, hot or cold.  Lemon yogurt is the best flavour, as is lemon gelato.  If something comes in a variety of fruit flavours it's the one I look for because it's quite likely that they didn't just use artificial flavouring - real lemon extract is economical.  Lemon juice finishes many of my most-loved dishes.

And just to prove how lemon-crazy I am, I recently made this delicious lemon poppy seed loaf from Seasaltwithfood.  In addition to using fresh and dried lemon peel, and glazing the crust with lemon syrup, I used lemon extract.  This loaf probably would've made the top of your skull cave in but I thought it was just right.

I always thought that lemon was the one flavour besides vanilla one could convince everyone to eat - until I met my husband.  He hates lemon.

April FOTM

Yes I'm pretending it's still April, shut up.

The fruit this month is the mango.  I have eaten what I'm sure are some of the worst mangoes ever.  In India, a monkey would turn down the mangoes sold for $2.50 apiece and up in Alberta.  I believe that Edmonton, in spite of its large Asian population, is the world's defective mango dumping-ground.  Having eaten all the good mangoes, Asia sends us the rest.

I can't say I blame them,though.  I love mangoes in spite of being tested this way.  I hope to someday go to India for the mango season and taste a proper one.  In the meantime, now is the season for the Alphonso Mango.  This is supposed to be the best mango out of hand - you don't want to cook these, just slice off their delicious cheeks and eat.  I have only seen them available in western Canada in the last two seasons.

 
They come to me a little worse for wear, having traveled long.  They have a strong lemon note to them that I've not tasted with other varieties.  Get them while you can because they have a short shelf life.

You Haven't Lived Until You've Eaten In A Chinese Bakery.

You know that saying, no food tastes as good as thin feels?  I live my life in complete opposition to it.  Thinness can never be as good as tasting food, my friends!

I have a Chinese friend whose Cantonese-speaking mother is on a mission to find me a maker of Dai Bao.  I can't really find any link-worthy articles about them that sum up the tasty experience.  I assume you're already familiar with the BBQ Pork Steam Bun of Taiwanese fame, of which I could eat a full steam tray's worth.  Dai Bao is the same dough made into a softball-size bun, designed in the Cantonese style to be a meal-sizer.  The filling consists of loose pork sausage and finely sliced onion, with a slice of hard-boiled egg and a chunk of Shiitake mushroom in the very centre (with regional variations).  I was introduced to them by a fellow machinist of Vietnamese extraction - he used to have just that for lunch.

A guy used to make them in Edmonton's Chinatown. He had a shop that was about three meters wide and two tiny tables.  He didn't really have much English and spent most of his time sitting in the back shooting the breeze with his buddies.  But he made Dai Bao that were out of this world.  That shop closed a few years ago and I've been looking for Dai Bao ever since.  I miss the steamy goodness of biting into the giant hot, sweet bun.