Lunar new year

Whether you want to call it the Year of the Sheep or Goat or Ram (or, for that matter, Year of the Gazelle, apparently true to some translations), the Lunar New Year is again upon us.

To celebrate, we had a feast of dim sum treats, most of which were from the freezer section of our local Asian produce market. We also had a bowl of stir-fried vegies (bamboo shoots, mushrooms and baby bok choi) so there'd be something homemade.

And part of that celebration was to do a posting -- after a long absence -- here on my once-upon-a-time daily blog.

Already it seems as though it's going to be a very different kind of year, with several good things happening already. Maybe I'll have to start paying attention to suppers yet again.

Gung hay fat choi! 

Almost the kitchen sink

After putting in a lot of miles this afternoon, by the time we stopped (it was crazy trying to find a site, but that's another story -- maybe a movie), supper needed to come together fast.

What's the fastest and most happy-making supper I could think of? Soup.

I mixed two different packets -- spicy seafood and a hot-and-sour base, so the results were hot hot hot.

Naturally, I threw in an assortment of strange additions. For protein, I chopped up the last of the lunch's meat, pastrami (which amazingly, turned out to be very good). As for salad, I didn't bother, but put it into the soup pot. A big bunch of broccoli and at the last second, a whole bunch of spinach.

A tube of those yummy (and fast) biscuits went into the oven and made the perfect addition.

An odd combination, but satisfying.

Dry camping has its challenges

Like, no electricity (save for batteries) or water (except for what’s in the holding tank or in the jug under the sink)…

Luckily, the propane-powered stove works under just about any circumstance.

I don’t know who convinced me to pre-cook our supper yesterday, but I did.

We’d found a specialty meats place and stocked up on bison and elk and other goodies, including a packet of goat meat. I did some cross-cultural seasonings, low-heat cooking the goat with a Thai red curry base. Lots of onions and garlic in the pot too. But then, what else is new there.

By rights, tonight I should have added coconut milk and Thai basil. But despite the deep (if tiny) pantry here, I had to make do with coconut juice. I put half the coconut juice into the sauce, along with fresh cauliflower. The other half of the little tin went into the rice as half of its liquid.

Salad? Not tonight. The last of the somewhat-tired-looking greens went into the pot at the last minute, as a pseudo substitute for the Thai basil that should have gone in.

Still, for a supper by lantern light, after a long day’s hike, this was satisfying.

P.S. I lied. There was sort of a salad. The little yellow colander is on the table, holding the extra cauliflower florets that offered hand-picked 'salad' for the taking.

Four...treats for me

After a day spent out of the house (again -- but this time because the builders were jackhammering, yoiks), I decided to stop by for takeaway Japanese food.

The picture shows how cute it all looks in its little takeaway box. Weirdly, I don't like the taste of eating food off of plastic, so before I ate it, I transferred the items to more normal plates. It just didn't look quite as pretty as it had.

There was also a container (which left its styrofoam cup for a lovely pottery bowl) of the always happy-making miso soup.

The Countdown begins

...with a birthday celebration!

With our house still not fit for hosting dinners, B's supper was at the restaurant of her choice. Lucky us, she chose a nearby Thai place.

When our salad of Som Tam arrived, she reminded us that last time she'd had this, it had come in a bowl-sized bag, as she'd actually had it in Thailand. The salad was followed by a vegetarian appetizer, an assortment of fried tofu, sweet potato and taro.

The mains were assorted curries and a wonderful noodle dish I'd never had, Pad See-Iew -- the same fat rice noodles as in Pad Thai, but with vegies and meat in a thick, smoky-tasting sauce. Apparently this flavour comes from a special Thai 'black' soy sauce. Whatever, the dish gets my vote as one I'll order again.

Best of all, the birthday girl was happy.

What a start to the countdown that will end this year-long blog. If that was Ten, what's next?

Yin and Yang

It started as a celebratory snack: takeaway sushi as a surprise to acknowledge the start of the DM's winter break from work.

Only then, when I did a fast supermarket shop, I grabbed a container of fresh oysters, thinking they could work their way into some complementary stir-fry as follow-up supper.

But some inventorying of the gifts we've prepared, followed by a couple of games of backgammon, led to it being time for supper. So, the whole lot got served together -- a mix of hot and cold foods.

The two little glasses up high on the left are the starters, a raw oyster in each glass, topped with fresh lemon and a dollop of hot sauce. Then there are the two plates of sushi treats with the cooked oysters (done with black bean sauce and chili oil) bottom right. The plate at the top right is steamed shrimp dumplings, part of our dim sum stock from the freezer.

Quite the mix, but a great way to start a holiday!

Colourful!

There's snow falling tonight, and everything outside is turning white, so we're having colourful food.

A pan of chicken thighs baked in a made-up curry sauce, one I hope I can duplicate -- with these thrown-together sauces, it can be tricky. It was a couple of spoonfuls of Thai red curry paste, about the same amount of coconut milk, olive oil, and then a bunch of orange juice to 'water' it down from the pasty state.

When there was about 20 minutes left for the chicken (while the rice cooked), I mixed cauliflower chunks into the sauce with the chicken. This proved to be just the right amount of time, as they came out flavoured with the sauce and cooked, but not mushy.

When I shopped the other day, I discovered that the produce store had local mixed-colour peppers -- mini size, just right for dipping in homous.

Because I didn't have any Naan bread, at the last minute I tossed a tortilla into the oven. It even puffed a bit and was quite a satisfactory substitute. Next time I try this, I think I'll coat it with a bit of oil first -- might keep it a bit softer, from getting too crisp.

A supper with lots of colour, and lots of flavour too!

Too-late posting

My friend Steve had a launch of his new book and took us out for yummy supper. And then, oops, there was a party after the reading which resulted in my not connecting with the Internet until after the magic midnight hour. I guess it will look as though I had two suppers on the 28th. But then, that's a good pal's birthday, so maybe the date is deserving of something distinctive.

Pic to follow once I'm home from Vancouver Island.


Beauty, eh! This soup contained just about everything you can think of: flank steak, tripe, oodles of satisfying noodles -- and really, it tasted even better than it looks.

Ordering in for someone special

If she’d been able to be with us, she’d have wanted to take us out to supper. But with the early darkness, complicated by today’s rainy weather, she’d probably have been just as happy to have the restaurant come to us. So that’s exactly what we did –ordered in.

The family together, sharing food and memories - had she been alive, that’s exactly the kind of supper my mother would have loved. One year since she’s gone, we’re keeping our love for her alive.
And even acknowledging her Christmas Day birthday with treats from the freezer.

Sanity in the midst of chaos

Life has been pretty crazy here, because we're doing renos again. Thankfully, even though he isn't well, the DM had the sense to suggest that we order in.

Tempura and sushi, complete with trimmings, made for an easy in-front-of-the-tv Friday night supper.

Quick stop supper

An evening for a school concert, so we needed to grab something fast. We tried a new Vietnamese place and were both very happy with our piled-high bowls of vermicelli, topped with grilled pork. The real treats were buried at the bottom of the bowl -- slivers of vegies, the most recognizable being cucumber and fennel. Quick, delicious and satisfying.

Getaway takeaway

Even though it's Thanksgiving weekend, we've hit the road. Most of the family seems to have had the same idea, so it's not as though we're hurting anyone's feelings.

We're camping out in our hotel room for supper tonight, having an assortment of takeaway sushi treats from a little place just down the street.

I thought the addition of a tiny 'bouquet' might make the meal seem slightly more civilized, or at least more Japanese. So I pinched a flower from the extravagant hotel garden and tucked it into the tiny bottle from the comp shampoo I'd just used.

No matter where we are, I like to think of supper as a special meal. In my mind, tonight's styrofoam serving plates are our very best china.

Hot stuff!

After a late afternoon walk through a nearby forest, a spicy hot supper sounded just right.

It started with eggplants from the garden -- one the traditional purple, the other a white one.

Once those started heating, I gradually added other vegies to the mix. Onions, garlic, half a red pepper, a few bunches of baby bok choy.

There was half a packet of prawns in the freezer, so they got a quick defrost under cold water.

Flavouring was Thai red curry paste and coconut milk. Topping it off were some of today's mushroom findings: a bit of cracked bolete, a solitary chanterelle, and a few bits of coral (you can spot one on top of the mix, to the left). Served with rice, it was hot in both temperature and seasoning. Just what a couple of bushwalkers needed.

Golden foods for a golden day

It's official. Today is the last day of summer '09. And a golden day it has been. The light streaming through the trees seems bent at a whole new angle.

So with all that golden light, coupled with the choice of leftovers available (bits of turmeric chicken), it seemed like a night for golden food.

What qualifies as golden? A curry that's filled with bite-sized drumettes as well as the aforementioned chunks. I also added onions, mushrooms, and an eggplant from the garden that needed rescuing from the slugs.

There's even a fleck of gold in the salad, as there was a chunk of yellow paper that stepped up to volunteer.

Tonight's the night

It's a big event for me tonight -- a book launch, so the Dear Man has been kind enough to buy us some takeaway for an early, easy supper.

Up, up and away!

Two Part Feast

As if making up for being deprived of seeds and grains this week, we celebrated my ability to eat again by getting our best-deal-in-town takeaway again. It offers more than a little bit of nearly everything I love.

The first part was miso soup, tempura, and assorted sushi treats. The second course was beef teriyaki, rice and a mix of vegies.

I couldn't eat all of it, but made a valiant try and enjoyed every variety-filled morsel, especially the sesame seeds, rice and other grainy-type treats.

So many choices!

We spent today at the PNE, the Pacific National Exhibition. It started out 99 years ago as an agricultural fair, but today the farm aspects seem a small part of the show.

With so many differenct kinds of food -- everything from little doughnuts to emu burgers (and just about anything else you can think of in between), we settled for two combo dishes from a Vietnamese eatery. The styrofoam plates and plastic forks never add anything positive to a meal, still -- it was easy enough to 'do' the dishes.

We did a bit of exchanging this for that, so both ended up with a sampling of some very tasty foods.

After-event treat

I still tend to think of summer as a time for being lazy. Not.

This morning saw us up with an alarm, then off to the berry farm to pick another round of blueberries. Then, this evening was a fundraising reading, so by the time that was over, it was a reeeally late supper.

Still, the wait was worth it, as we went out to one of our favourite restaurants (again). Tonight's menu was (clockwise, from left) Bombay style garlic fish, chili paneer, and tofu with mushrooms. Pretty spectacular end to a nicely full day.

Different kinds of magic

Having supper after 9 seemed a little bit magical, especially after seeing Harry Potter at a nearby cinema.

We ordered two dishes, both nicely spiced -- one with lamb, the other with those nifty skinny eggplants. With a bit of rice, we both had plenty to eat, and even have enough for tomorrow's lunch.

Full moon poking through the clouds on the drive home proved to be the most magical of all.

Le grand buffet

Well, the numbers are down tonight -- only nine rather than the last few days' fourteen. We all wanted to give Helen a break, so we took her out to that Asian place, the one we went to last week where they have everything under the sun. The photo only shows one section of the place, so you can imagine how all of us were able to find plenty of whatever we wanted.

And as I'd imagined when I heard about the free food this restaurant planned to serve on Canada Day, the lines went around the block and they served nearly 3,000 at the Hamilton outlet alone -- apparently 30,000 were served that day through the whole chain.

So, how many helpings did each of us have tonight? Don't even ask.

Burp.