Edible Tulip

Truffles, anyone?

I took a well deserved road trip today through the country to get my snow tires put on before we get swept up in wintry weather (where is that first blast of flurries by the excited way? I can't wait to skate round and round and catch snowflakes on my tongue). It was marvelous to drive up and down the hills with nobody else on the road and I decided to make a stop at Aarden's chocolates in Stayner, Ontario (off Airport Road, south of Wasage Beach, North-West of Barrie).

Aarden's is owned and operated by Mark and Monica Aarden of Holland. They settled in Stayner 7 years ago and opened their chocolate shop. Mark is 38 years old and he's been working with chocolate for 21 years if that makes any sense. It must be the European mentality of specializing early on in life! It's a lovely store with a festive and charming window display -- Christmas trees, enormous chocolate sleds, chocolate wreaths, 3 foot chocolate santas, trees on lollipop sticks -- and then an absolutely jam packed interior full of cake trays of truffles, bonbons and adorable chocolates with gold glittering mini sparkly trees. Don't take children into this place. They'll have a visual sweetness overload and collapse out of eternal indecision! Well, the same applies for adults I suppose.

They import the best grade chocolate from Belgium and they hand make everything on site with individual tempering machines for their dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate. They also import their marzipan from Germany and their walnuts from France. I got to take home a truffle log handmade with a piping tube and filled with a champagne ganache interior and then decorated with dark chocolate shavings. I'm still in heaven!

Aarden's Chocolates
270 Main Street East
Stayner, ON L0M 1S0
705-428-3385

Mexican Black Beans & Rice

This fall has been so full of ups and downs I've completely resorted to bowl meals for dinner. I am working on reservoirs of energy and imagination so when I scan my cupboard I'm thinking what can I make that is tasty, digestible and soothing. My stomach can't handle any more drama.

Mexican black beans and rice is a pretty straight forward meal if you plan a little bit ahead. It's recommended to soak the beans overnight but I didn't for this dish and it worked out just fine. I just cooked them slowly in a lot of water with a whole onion and several cloves of garlic for a few hours on low tasting them here and there to make sure I knew when they were nearing the finale - a touch chewy but without a grainy centre. Meanwhile you can get together the sauce. I picked out a few different kinds of dried chiles - pancho, chipotle and several small red bud sized ones from Guatemala - and poured boiling water over top of them in a bowl and let them sit for half an hour. Then I peeled back the skin and removed the seeds. The skin went into a small blender with the remaining water and I blended them until they formed a syrup-like puree. I chopped up garlic and onion and sauteed it in olive oil then I added a few teaspoons of cumin seeds, a pinch of oregano and a few teaspoons of oregano and stirred it together. I dumped a can of diced tomatoes and warmed the sauce before adding the chile puree. A dash of wine vinegar came at the end. Then I dumped the sauce into the beans and let it all simmer for 1/2 hour to develop flavour. I cooked rice separately and blended everything in a bowl with chopped cilantro added just before eating. Be generous with salt and then open a beer.

I'm vague with exact ingredients because it depends on how much onion you want in your dish or how strong you want to taste the garlic or how hot you want the sauce to be. Use your own taste alchemy.

Tibetan Red Lentils

The little grocery store around the corner from me sells these bright clementine orange tiny red Tibetan lentils by weight. They cost nothing. And they make a perfectly delicious dal seasoned with turmeric, cumin seeds, chile powder, and coriander. A squeeze of lime cuts the spicy flavour and then I'm lost in the balance of tart and sweet that I adore so much. It's a subtle aromatic spicy sweet not a saccharine sugary sweet. I doled ladles full of thick stew onto perfectly cooked (in my world that means a bit chewy) brown basmati rice, salted the whole thing down and then added a handful of chopped coriander/cilantro for freshness. It's a great fall meal and I go back for bowl after bowl after bowl.

Qu'est que c'est?

Alas, any ideas what this handy item might make easier if you lived near rocky tangled brush where bears like to roam?

Les Saucisses (or ahem, the lowly sausage)

Now that I've come clean about my carnivorous habits, I'll tell you a secret. St. Lawrence Market used to pretty much revolt me when I was a full on herbivore rarely eating cheese and only occasionally ingesting fish or eggs. I used to have to hold my breath and avert my eyes as I made my way past the unloading truck with the piles of distended carcasses with sawed off limbs. I had to duck often as the delivery man, covered in blood, wended his way inside with a rigor mortis carcass on his back. Then there were the display cases with stuffed birds and back bacon and rows of ribs and tongue and ground beef. And while I still don't love the smell of raw meat of any kind and I still don't enjoy seeing blood seep from any living creature, I have come to find myself enraptured in this new ritual of mine of eating lunch at the market in the midst of all these animal parts in order to find something new to cook for dinner.

This sausage maker is at the north west corner of the market. It's the first stall you come to if you enter the doors to the far right of the main entrance off of Front Street. Last time I was there, on Friday actually, there was a charming young boy of about 18 who hails from Siberia serving me. Blonde, blue eyed and a definite sausage connoisseur. I tried the pork sausages with sage last night but I think I prefer the lamb sausages with coriander. Pork tends to be too salty and too 'porkish' for my delicate taste buds! I like the herb tinged subtle flavour of lamb...

I boil the sausages for 10 minutes. Let cool. Then cut up and eat with a horseradish Polish mustard, roast potatoes, roast tomatoes and boiled french beans. The pork sausage which I hastily used in a curried dish the other night would much better suit a spicy tomato pasta sauce.

Park Bench

Since I wrote about lunches yesterday, today I'll write a wee note about snacks. I seem to be quite peckish lately. I can think of a few excuses for this but for the most part I'll blame it on the incoming cold weather and the crisp air and the way a brisk walk in a park makes you want to sit down on a park bench just like the one hanging quietly back in the shadows of this picture and eat a few treats.

I've found some remarkable sesame snaps that are made from sesame seeds, molasses and black cumin seeds. Delicious! I got them at the Cheese Dairy on Bloor St. in the Annex. I also like Pita Break pitas toasted at home, smeared in almond butter and gooey crystalized honey and then wrapped in paper towels. A favourite walking snack is a large Mutsu barely ripe apple followed by too many tamari almonds. Sesame sticks are good too but they tend to make me feel just trecherous after a few handfuls. Japanese rice crackers are yummy too but they stick terribly to the teeth. A nice hard pear and a hunk of blue cheese or a slab of caraway gouda is perfect. Perfect. These snacks are so easy and so effortless.

What are your favourite snacks? Hmm?

A Touch of Avocado

I thought I'd welcome myself back after an extended absence (hard times, gentle reader, temporarily befell me) with a short post about the gracious act of bringing a tupperware lunch to work. On top of dealing with a more than heart wrenching situation over the past 2 months I was also snaking my way underground on the smelly Toronto TTC to work which was high in a tower full of enterprising but rather frat-boyish bankers and money wranglers. Not a welcome situation after my time as a river rat this summer. One joyous aspect of this tedious temporary existence was making my lunch every morning. After drinking a cup of Roobios tea and eating a grapefruit I'd get to work scouring my cupboards and fridge looking for anything that was salad worthy.