Dessert By Candy

Wisdom

It’s a privilege to talk to those who live a long meaningful life. I spent last weekend at a skating friend’s parents’ home. Although our conversations didn’t really touch on any serious or personal subjects, their easy and confident manner exudes wisdom. I saw this too in my team owner when we went on a road trip from Fort Lauderdale to Cape Coral. The turn of events that brought him where he is today and the obstacles that he overcame. Wisdom is so very different from cleverness or quick wits which I see everyday from my peers. It is a quiet and steady intelligence people earned after years of navigating the ups and downs of life. They continue to engage and evolve with the ever changing society. They genuinely care about the people around them. They show me through action that growing old is a badge of honour. They give me hope that one day I may join their ranks.

My mind is preoccupied with accepting a new reality that my most recent injury has essentially shattered all my athletic goals for this season. I need to re-evaluate my priorities and I long for the guidance of people who made it through much harder situations. I have no doubt that things will be okay but I just need to figure out how to bridge that mental gap between saying and believing.

Breaking A Habit

It was an emotional trip to Whole Foods last night for my weekly groceries. Out of old habits, my attention was involuntarily drawn to all things cherries. It didn’t help that cherry season is kicking off and there was a huge display of glistening red orbs. For the last three years, I had been keeping my eyes out for interesting and tasty cherry treats and stocked my pantry with dried sour cherries because that was ex-boyfriend’s favourite food. My freezer was never without a precious stash of hand-pitted sour cherries so I could bake the ultimate treat, a flakey juicy cherry lattice pie.

All the cherry chocolate, cherry granola, cherry cookie, cherry juice that I laid eyes on last night only taunted me of hurt. While my heart was never far away from searching out things that he would enjoy, the relationship already slipped away from my grasp long ago. I don’t want to be eaten by resentment but I can’t help feeling like a complete idiot all along. If this is part of the natural progression of grieving, I hope it’ll be over soon. For lack of more eloquent description, it sure sucks big time right now.

I am not a fan of this woe-is-me mentality and I believe that surrounding myself with beauty is my path to healing. You can’t argue with the beauty of fruit harvest at the height of their seasonal best, can’t you? So despite a sad trip at the grocery store, I picked up some gorgeous Bing cherries to make Cherry Clafoutis.

Down Time

I thought things were slowly returning to an upswing but I was wrong. Last Saturday I fell during a ceremonial Walk To London roll and trashed my helmet. The fall was absurd and I am mad at myself for crashing under such innocuous circumstances. My helmet served me well and shattered as it should but I was dizzy for some time. After much consideration, I was taken to a nearby hospital in Washington DC on an ambulance, strapped to a board on the stretcher to immobilize me. When the triage nurse assessed my injuries, she asked is my home a safe place. I didn’t understand the question at first and was puzzled by this totally unrelated question. Of course my home is a safe place. It only dawned on me hours later that my weekly scars from skating-related crashes look suspiciously like the result of domestic violence. Not good, Candy, not good.

CAT scan and x-ray were taken and all results came back negative. But this emergency room visit was emotionally challenging. It was a very scary feeling to be surrounded by strange faces while lying helplessly on a stretcher, unable to move, unable to determine how badly I just hurt myself. The paramedics and triage nurses argued back and forth if my injury was a trauma only added to my stress. I was passed around between many different medical professionals. Although all of them were calm and friendly, I couldn’t shake that horrible feeling of being interrogated with the same questions over and over again. It almost felt like a trick to see how long it would take for me to break down. Obviously that was not the intention but I rarely felt so scare and lonely at the same time.

Abundance Of Cuteness

The Snack That Smiles Back is not limited to day-glo orange Goldfish crackers. Not only did I bake snack that smiles back at me this week, my snack tastes even more addictive than those little cheesy fishies.

Savoury Toasted Seaweed Sesame Sablés have an awfully posh root. The recipe originally came from David Lebovitz who passed it on to Dorie Greenspan, both famed cookbook authors based in Paris. In the headnotes, there were mentions of seaweed sea salt, cocktail nibbles, bottles of red wine, and possibly dinner party at Paris apartments. So very very grown up. All of which somehow totally went over my head and I locked my attention on seaweed. That’s nori to me. Nori is Japanese. Japan makes me think of all things cute. Ooo, I recently received the cutest nori puncher. Let’s make smiley face seaweed cookies!

The rest, as they say, is history.

It Rained Then It Poured

Note to self: never try to bake at 4am after stewing in tears and anger for an hour. What ought to be an easy jam tart featuring toasty cornmeal, crumbly buttery crust, and puckery sweet homemade plum jam turned into late night oven scrubbing. Trust me, it was not fun. Far from it.

The evening began well enough with the carefully prepared dough chilling in the fridge. The press-in-pan cornmeal dough was well-behaved and I emptied two jars of red plum jam into the tart pan. I neatly sliced that fat little log of dough into circles and they lined the top of the tart in an attractive pattern. Somewhere between that and the tart baking in the oven, I received an upsetting email which made me furious and sad and hurt and everything in between.

Beets, All For Me

Surely you heard praise on roasted beets and how it is a transformative experience from those vile canned beets you grew up eating at your mother’s table. Even beets you boil and peel painstakingly by hand are far superior to the canned stuff. It’s fair to say that no decent cook worth her salt should ever reach for that can opener. I’m fine with the rule but I’m also here to tell you that the rule can be broken. I am not ashamed to admit that I used canned beets for this Lime & Honey Beet Salad.

Perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, poor girl, what did she do to deserve that horrible fate of chomping down canned beets? Well, it’s really not the end of the world. There are much more pressing personal matters to occupy my attention right now. For the time being, I just want to be kind to myself. A shortcut here and there is totally acceptable as I get my heart and my body back to 100%. Hugs are welcome too.

Rhubarb Fever

As a frequent shopper at farmers markets, I have my shopping kryptonite. You know, it’s the one produce you can never leave the market without it bouncing happily in your basket. My shopping kryptonite is rhubarb. Never mind that I am often clueless what to do with them. I made plenty of rhubarb dessert and preserves before. Yet every time I stare at the bunch of opalescent ruby stalks in my fridge, my culinary inspiration runs dry.

The rhubarb season this year caught me like love at first sight. Just looking at the elegant slender stalks put a smile on my face. I paired them with the first crop of juicy Ontario strawberries to make a jewel-like jam that sparkled in the sun. I made rhubarb crumble, a homely dessert that always brightens my day. As classic as these combinations are, I wanted something a little unusual. Entered David Lebovitz’s Ready For Dessert.

Generosity

I feel tremendously lucky to be surrounded by generous friends and family. They show me through everyday actions that the old adage is true: the more you give, the more you receive. Obviously I do not take their generosity for granted but I prefer to assume that people are generous by nature. Perhaps it is the effect of rose-tinted glasses but I feel like I live in a safer, happier world with this assumption.

I try hard to emulate the generous spirits of my loved ones. Karma goes around and being so often on the receiving end, it’s only appropriate that I reciprocate to spread the good vibes around in my own little ways. Here is an example. When I declared that I wanted to go to World Masters, so many of you stepped up and offered help in every way imaginable. All the coaching and support to guide me through my journey. A place to stay for lengthy five weeks and kicked my butt in gear. Training partners who made sure I did not slack off and yet being encouraging at the same time. Friends from across the continent who shuttled me back and forth from race to race and put a roof over my head. Team sponsor who ensured I had the equipment I needed. Family who took care of all my needs back home so I could race without worries from afar. Because of you, I felt loved and well taken care of, like that cozy feeling of swaddling in a fluffy duvet on a winter night.

Trade Ice Cream For Bavarois

I ought to be excited about making olive oil ice cream for this week’s French Fridays with Dorie, except that I’m not. Over the years, my old faithful ice cream maker showered me with frozen treat of flavours ranging from traditional to adventurous. Unfortunately, it’s been sitting on the counter forlornly for the last few years. I simply lost that passion for churning homemade ice cream.

That passion did not reignite even though ice cream was on the agenda this week. Instead, I procrastinated until the very last minute to attempt this recipe. The only reason I have something to show is because at the eleventh hour I came up with my own non-ice cream interpretation of this recipe. If you dismissed the Olive Oil Ice Cream recipe in Around My French Table due to lack of an ice cream maker, here is your chance to experience it in a slightly different way. I present you Rosemary Olive Oil Bavarois.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait (And Wait)

Regardless of what you call it, making dulce de leche / cajeta / arequipe / confiture de lait takes time and a good dose of patience. I’m not talking about the common shortcut of boiling a can of condensed milk until it turns to a warm shade of brown. Let’s get back to the basics and slowly simmer milk with sugar until it reduces to liquid caramel gold. It takes hours of gentle heat to reduce a big pot of milk down to 30% of its original volume. It’s a good thing the reward promises such deliciousness because standing over a hot stove stirring (and stirring some more) for hours on end tests the patience of any cook.

I don’t know what inspired me to make cajeta from scratch. It was a spur of the moment decision to pick up two litres of organic goat milk on my way home on Sunday. I don’t even yet have plans to use the cajeta. I came across Rick Bayless’ recipe a few months ago and immediately a question came to mind. Can it be made in a slow cooker?