Save Your Fork… There’s Pie

I had a bit of a bad day in the kitchen the other day. In the morning, I poured hot water into my knock-off bodum coffee pot, only to watch it crack down the length of the side and do this weird ring crack around the bottom. In fact, when I dumped the coffee and pulled the glass out of the plastic frame, the bottom was one solid round piece. Which doesn’t help me much in terms of making coffee.

Later that day, the carrier on my older model food processor gave up the ghost. I was making pizza and was being lazy, figuring I could save time be shredding the mozzarella in the food processor instead of by hand. I have an older Braun Multiplex where the slicing/grating blades attach to the top of a plastic frame thing called a carrier. After almost 10 years of heavy use, the plastic was done and the carrier broke into three pieces. Not even electrical tape could save it.

I was worried that the part was discontinued, but a call to Braun the next day has a new carrier in the mail to me. Of course, I missed the delivery and now have to trek over to the post office to pick it up.

Meanwhile, the husband went to get a new beaker for the coffee pot and came home with a real Bodum beaker since the store no longer carried a cheap knock-off house brand. It’s a tad large, and makes for some interesting coffee-making in the mornings when I’m half asleep.

You know what I hate? Giving my money to evil corporations like D*sney. I held out on even renting the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie until it moved off the new releases rack (the point at which the video store has paid off the purchase of the film) so none of my rental fee would go to the Big D.

I spent all summer longingly reading reviews of Ratatouille, waiting for it to come out on video. Then the husband decided to buy it. And I must be losing some of my commie pinko enthusiasm, because I let him. I didn’t say, “no, let’s wait and rent it when it moves off the new releases shelf”, I said, “okay, cool.” And then spent the day feeling guilty.

But ohhh… it truly is wonderful. In my top ten best movies ever, and in contention to knock The Triplets of Belleville out of my favourite animated film spot. The DVD comes with an interview segment that includes producer Brad Bird and chef Thomas Keller, whose ratatouille recipe is the basis for the one in the film - it even shows him making the dish.

Greg’s justification for buying the disc rather than waiting to rent it was that he knew we’d want to watch it more than once, so it would make sense to own a copy. And he’s absolutely right. This is one of those films that I will come back to and watch over and over again. It’s sweet and funny and technically beautiful, and it’s so accurate in terms of the food and kitchen aspects of the plot that I can’t help but sing its praises.

Every food lover needs to see this film.

And I’m the shrimp,
The smallest of all,
They call me the shrimp
Because I’m not very tall.

Who knew that my theatrical claim to fame would be at the age of ten, singing a song about fish, and being photographed in a shrimp costume?

Our school, not having the money to pay for royalties for a more well-known Broadway-style musical, instead, for our annual play, performed a creation called Time Fog, a historical tour of the history of Nova Scotia, as written by the school’s music teacher. It dealt with the expulsion of the Acadians, the founding of the City of Halifax, and even Confederation. One scene explored Nova Scotia’s rich fishing heritage.

I didn’t play the Shrimp in the stage version, I was a mere extra, but the play had gotten such a huge amount of coverage in the local news that the school was asked to create a recording and slide presentation to send around to other schools. The kid who played Shrimp was sick on recording day, and being the first person in the line of sight of the music teacher (being able to fit into the shrimp costume didn’t hurt) I was the lucky gal who got to wander through the school to the set, trying to keep the other kids from pulling off my many legs.

But I was, ultimately, the fake Shrimp. And the kid who brought the role to life onstage never let me forget it.

I was reminded of my Shrimp role recently when I picked up a package of soy-based shrimp at the local health food store. It doesn’t actually say “shrimp” on the package anywhere, it’s “Szechuan Style Stir-Fry”, but what comes out of the little shrink-wrapped blob is definitely meant to look like shrimp.

Although I was pescetarian for many years, I stopped eating shrimp early on. After reading the works of Dr. Vandana Shiva about the destruction shrimp farming has caused in coastal India and Thailand, I couldn’t justify it. I didn’t like the things that much. In recent months, even Wal-Mart has hopped on the sustainable shrimp bandwagon, and is supposedly refusing to sell any shrimp not farmed in a sustainable manner. Given that shrimp farming has been linked to the destruction caused by the 2004 tsunami, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

But back to my faux shrimp. The product is made by a company called Montreal Veggie Gourmet, who are most well known for their seitan-based Smoked Wheat and Roast Wheat, pastrami and roast beef copies that are probably the most authentic faux meat products I’ve ever had. I figured these would be good too.

Now, they look like the real thing. Freakishly so. They’re even pinkish on the outside to look like the various sections of the tail. Taste-wise, shrimp tend to take on the taste of what they’re cooked in; on their own, they’re pretty bland, so a soy copy works pretty much like all soy-based products do, sucking up the sauce they were cooked in. It was the texture that was wrong. So very wrong.

Shrimp is one of those meats with a bit of bounce. No matter how it’s cooked, it’s always slightly tough, with a bit of spring to it. My faux shrimp were doughy, almost fluffy, inside. It was sort of like eating a shrimp-shaped ball of bread.

As there were only six in the package, we managed to finish them, but afterwards, Greg and I looked at each other and admitted our buyer’s remorse.

I don’t know whatever happened to the kid who played Shrimp. I don’t even remember his name. But somewhere out there, there are photos and recordings of me, pretending to be the Shrimp, and like my soy-based shrimp product, probably doing a really bad job of it.

We went to Little India on the weekend to soak in some of the festive Diwali vibe. As usual, our main goal was to come home with as many sweets as we could carry.

I don’t know the names of all the different types of sweets, but I know this - they’re all really yummy.

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During the course of  everyday life, we are forced to make choices on a continual basis. Sometimes those choices turn out well, others not so much. Thus was the case last week when, short on time, I had to choose between two different local food events, one that had plenty of free samples but that wasn’t really story worthy for TasteTO, and the other that sounded interesting and had the potential for a decent article but turned out to be a dud.

The one I passed on? A media event to introduce the 140 new items on the holiday PC Insider’s Report, which included everything from dulce de leche in a jar to chocolate chai tea to canned Christmas dinner for dogs.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid…

Because a week later, other food writers, those not bound by a mandate to keep their work Toronto-specific, were filling the pages of their papers and magazines and websites with stories of the delights that were to be had at that media launch. Samples of British-style sticky toffee, dim sum, and General Tao Chicken flavoured potato chips.

A copy of the Insider’s Report showed up in the weekly flyer bags that are left in the lobby of my building. President’s Choice has once again succeeded in taking a number of locally-made products and creating their own version. That gorgeous chocolate chip sour dough boule from Ace Bakery - now available at Loblaws and Superstores across Canada. The maple balsamic I bought at the Good Food Fair from the maple lady - now on the shelves of the No Frills.

Fortunately, my envy is countered by the fact that these products are already showing up in stores. We ate the Compania Four Seasons pizza for dinner last night, and I passed a display of the Butter Fudge when grocery shopping a couple of days ago. Haven’t found the dog food complete with apple crumble dessert yet, but it’s what our dogs will be having for Christmas dinner.

Next year, when having to choose between a stuffy event that bored me to tears and a chance to try all the new holiday PC products weeks before they hit the shelves - guess which one I’ll be choosing?

I loves me some Mexican food, so the first thing we did when we hit the Day of the Dead festival at Harbourfront Centre yesterday was to grab some grub. Our favourite folks from El Jacal where there serving up their awesome nachos, which meant we ended up ignoring the tasty-looking tacos from Mariachi’s, but we were just too full to eat any more.

Seating indoors was packed, so we ended up on an outdoor patio in the cold, but even that couldn’t quell our desire for nachos and tortillas and flautas and oh… the lovely wonderful churros. They weren’t hot from the fryer and I had to ward off hungry sparrows, but they were still amazingly fluffy and sweet, rolled in cinnamon sugar and doused in chocolate.

Then we hit the marketplace and bought chocolate skulls and sugar skulls and little skulls made from some grain that no one could come up with an English word for, but that I later determined to be amaranth, which has been grown in Mexico for centuries and is believe to have magical properties that give amazing strength. We also bought chips meant to be served with lime and hot sauce, and some beautiful sweets that were made with milk and had a consistency similar to fudge.

For the non-foodie part of our Day of the Dead adventure, check out the post on Leaves and Petals.

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My little baby freezer arrived this morning. Except it’s not so very little. It takes up a small amount of floor space, but is surprisingly large inside. Definitely enough room to stuff a dead body should the occasion warrant it.

The kitchen arrangement issues are still up in the air, though.

It doesn’t work well in my originally planned spot for it, but in the spot where the freezer fits nicely, there is only one outlet that already has the fridge, the microwave and an extension cord that connects to a lamp (because my kitchen has terrible lighting so I’ve got a spotlight aimed at the butcher’s block), a window fan (for extra exhaust when roasting coffee so as not to set off the smoke alarm) and the coffee roaster.  So I’m a little iffy about plugging yet another appliance into that outlet. But the lamp, the fan and the coffee roaster all have to stay where they are, likewise the fridge.

So my zealousness to start cooking and freezing anything is on hold until Greg comes home and we can play kitchen Tetris and figure out where everything is going to live. But man, I am so going to fill that little freezer with homemade stock! So long, bouillon cubes!