Cooking Blues and Elders (Berries, that is)

Since I promised that I would make another blueberry dessert for MJ and the J-Man, I ended up making the last one of the season. For next year (or if you can still get your hands on the last of this summer’s extraordinary crop), now you too can make my favourite old recipe for dessert, Blueberry Buckle:

Blueberry Buckle

(From “American Classics” cookbook, part of the Cook’s Magazine Series)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup (3 3/4 oz. ) unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (5 1/4 oz.) plus 1 tablespoon sugar (I prefer organic sugar, if you can find it. It has a cleaner flavour and crunchier texture for the bit on top.)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
2 cups blueberries, picked over and rinsed

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 350°. Put butter in an 8-inch square or 9-inch round pan (I get away with a 9-inch rectangular pan) and place pan in the oven to melt the butter.

Meanwhile, whisk the flour, 3/4 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Add the milk and whisk until just incorporated into the dry ingredients.

When the butter has melted, remove the pan from the oven. Pour the batter into the pan without stirring it into the butter. Arrange the blueberries over the batter. Sprinkle with the remaining tablespoon of sugar.

Bake until the surface is golden brown and the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 40 or 50 minutes. Serve warm, with vanilla ice cream, if you like (we’ve had it within nothing added plenty of times).

This is so ridiculously easy a recipe, that you can do it on a whim. I made it at least 4 times this summer, and look forward to making it again several times next summer. Who said a baked fruit dessert has to take much time or effort?

Other berries…

The other night, we took a bag of Elderberries home from Granville Market. Louis, the Mushroom Guru, who we frequently chat with and get advice about what’s in season, what’s growing, how to prepare things, etc. had them and told us what to do. We boiled them down with a little water, sugar, and apple slices (for the pectin), filtered what it reduced to through some cheesecloth, and we got a thick, purple syrup. Here are a few photos of the process:

Pam tried some of this final cup or so of syrup on vanilla ice cream tonight and said it tasted a lot like blueberries. I’m going to try it in sparkling water to see if it makes good ‘Elderberry Soda’. No, we have no plans of making Elderberry Wine, but we’ve certainly heard about that very old-fashioned potent potable.

Nine Times

I took this screenshot of my menu bar (I use MenuCalendarClock, an application that offers more flexibility in terms of what it displays, along with a drop-down mini-calendar that syncs with iCal).

Yes, that was a picture taken at 9:09 on 9-9-09. Next year I get to take one a month and a day and an hour and a minute later to match.

Oh, and the title refers to a line from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. If you don’t know it, you’ll just have to see it.

Blueberry Custard Pie with Ginger Nut Crumb Crust

I think I’ve probably mentioned at some point or other that while I like to cook (a lot!), the one kind of food that I rarely make is dessert. It’s a combination of several reasons; I don’t have a particular sweet tooth, and in fact, usually crave salty, crunchy things (My weakness is crunchy, salty, melted cheesy things, like nachos, pizza or raclette). In a fine restaurant, you’ll often see me ordering the cheese plate for dessert. I also don’t have a lot of faith in my ability to get the exact measurements that cake baking requires (I tend to work on estimates, a dash of this, a splash of that, a handful of the other…). Finally, my mother admitted that she could never bake a pie. For all of us in our family, pie-making was a black art, a skill that my mother had never been able to gain, being a European immigrant from a place where they made strudel, tortes and palatschinken, but rarely tarts and never pies. Since I learned most of my early cooking from her, I also lacked the ability to make a pie.
So tonight, at the end of the summer, I decided that instead of the usual way that I’ve been dealing with the abundance blueberries this summer, due to the area’s bumper crop, I would throw together a little original dessert creation, which I’m going to call: Blueberry Custard Pie with Ginger Nut Crumb Crust. It’s dead easy, and if you also have some of those blueberries (or strawberries, bananas or other fruit that goes well with custard), this might be a good way to use them.

Blueberry Custard Pie with Ginger Nut Crumb Crust

For the crust:
1 package/roll of McVitie’s Ginger Nuts (their version of Ginger Snaps)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces

For the filling:
3 tablespoons Bird’s Custard Powder
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
2 cups fresh blueberries

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350° . Crush the cookies in a food processor (or put them in a bag and hit them with hammer, if you haven’t got one).  After most of the bigger pieces have gotten broken down (about 10-12 pulses), add the butter, and process for another 15 seconds or so. Butter a pie plate and dump the crumbs onto it. Press it down on all sides so that it’s even. Bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes, but be careful not to burn the crumbs.Let cool.

Make the custard: Put sugar and custard mix in a pan, and slowly wisk in milk and water. Bring to a full boil while stirring nearly continuously (custard will thicken as you cook it. This is essentially the recipe from the side of the can.). Let cool, covered, to just over room temperature.

Pour the custard over the crust, and top with the fruit. Serve after chilled. Resist the urge to eat it right away or the custard won’t let you cut nice neat slices. Which may or may not matter to you.

The Finished (and partially devoured) Pie

This is about as homely and ready-made as I ever get (Custard from a mix!? Cookie crumb crust!?) and has a 1950s-English-household feel to it (not surprising, given that 2 of the ingredients in it are British). However, I have to admit that it does taste awfully good, since the molasses and butter in the crust taste a bit like toffee, and the custard and blueberries go well together. While I don’t plan on making it for company, it is probably going to show up on the dinner table next summer, especially if we are getting as good a blueberry crop as this year’s.

Things Only a Republican Could Believe

I haven’t blogged much about US politics in a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been following the farce that is the current debate about ‘Death Panels’, Obama’s birth certificate, Conspiracies about the subversive artwork around Rockefeller Center and other inanities.

I saw this on reddit.com, and would normally merely link to it, but it’s so spot-on that I just had to include it here. Sure, it’s got some rude words and is a bit angry, but these days, so are a lot of us:

So, y’all remember that email that went around years ago called “Things Only a Republican Could Believe”? I’m pretty sure there was a Democratic variant as well. Well, I’ve put together a new and updated list and wanted to run it by you. Please feel free to add to it or offer corrections\comments. If you like it — email it out to your spamming list. I’m hoping for a bit of a viral effect to get it circulating. Satire is an effective weapon against craziness!

I make no apologies if you consider yourself a Republican. I am a registered Independent and have voted Republican at various levels of government, but the current crop of Republicans at the national level are off the reservation. To call them bat shit crazy would be an insult to bat shit.

• Parents who don’t want their children to pray in school are Anti-American zealots — parents who don’t want their children to listen to a speech by the President of the United States telling them to work hard and get good grades are noble patriots.
• Peacefully demonstrating against the country starting an international war is treason — showing up with automatic weapons to protest healthcare reform is democracy at its finest.
• Any government official with a desk job should have every action scrutinized — any government official with a badge and a gun should never be questioned or disrespected. At all. Ever.
• Questioning the legitimacy of an election because the “winner” was selected by the Supreme Court is sour grapes — questioning the legitimacy of an election because the winner (by the largest number of votes in American history) is really a Kenyan born Muslim despite all evidence to the contrary is being a vigilant American.
• Lying about a blowjob is an impeachable offense — lying about a war is no big deal, really.
• Investigating a shady land deal involving the First Lady is a matter of National Identity — investigating the use of torture at the direction of the Executive Branch is a partisan witch hunt.
• Executing Japanese officers for waterboarding prisoners during WWII shows that we have the moral high-ground on human rights — waterboarding (our own) prisoners of our shows that we have the moral high ground on human rights.
• Sitting two rows in front of Jane Fonda in a 1970 anti-war rally is an OUTRAGE!  Shaking Saddam’s hand in 1983…meh, not so much.
• Anyone who questions the president during a time of war is giving aide and comfort to the enemy and should be deported…unless the president in question has a (D) next to their name in which case you should undermine them at every turn even if you have to routinely make shit up to do it.
• Socialism, Marxism, Communism and Fascism are all interchangeable words that mean pretty much the same thing.
• Anyone who abuses drugs should be locked up indefinitely…unless they are a popular Republican radio host in which case they need your prayers as they recover from the illness of addiction.
• Health Insurance companies have your best interests in mind and anyone who thinks otherwise is trying to turn America into the Godless heathen nation of Sweden where everyone in the country dies (eventually).
• Obama is an atheist communist muslim who attended a radical christian church.
• Believing that human activity could impact the global environment is crazy talk — believing that an invisible man in the sky personally told George Bush to invade Iraq to fulfill Biblical prophecy is logically sound.
• The verdict is still out on evolution — but Jesus Christ returning in our lifetimes is a pretty much a given.
• The media are unquestionably biased against Republicans — Talk Radio, The Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, Rightwing Blogs, Fox News and NewsCorp are not part of the media.
• The government should have no part in regulating multinational corporations as they make decisions that impact the lives of millions of people — government should regulate individuals by determining who they can marry, what kind of intercourse they can have, what they can smoke, how to manage their pregnancy and how to proceed with end of life decisions.
• Communicating with hostile nations is a stab in the back to our great nation — Reagan communicating with the USSR during the Cold War was Political Genius.
• Iran is a mortal threat to our nation and anyone who attempts to talk to them is traitorous scum — selling weapons to Iran and then funneling the money to start wars in South America is clearly in our National interest.
• George Bush kept the nation safe after 9-11 (NOTE: the Anthrax attacks, the DC Sniper and Hurricane Katrina don’t count. Also, the fact that 9-11 happened on his watch despite receiving a security briefing specifically warning of the attack doesn’t count either.)
• Social Security, Meidcare, public schooling, public libraries, fire departments, police departments and the US Military are as American as Apple Pie — universal healthcare is ZOMGDEATHPANELSOCIALISM!!
• George W Bush is a regular ‘ole Texas rancher just like you and me despite the fact that he was born in Connecticut, attended two Ivy League schools, bought the Crawford ranch just before running for president, sold it immediate after leaving office and is terrified of horses.
• The two guys at the center of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals are trustworthy voices in discussions of current national policy and should be taken at face-value.

…and my addition that I heard some time back on twitter and still quote to this day:

Follow up:
I loved this bit of video from MSNBC that sums up how I’m feeling about a great deal of America these days:

Cold Season and Another Try with FontKit

I haven’t had a cold in quite a while, so the one I have now feels particularly annoying. It’s not as if I’ve forgotten what a cold is like, but I think you can get used to them, when you get them more often (and I’m sure I did suffer from frequent colds- nearly every few months or so when we lived in Boston). It’s a rainy day, and this is Cold: Day 2 ( which means, runny nose, sneezes and a little less energy), Cold: Day 2 is always easier for me than Cold: Day 1 (sore throat, runny nose, feeling like crap). Hopefully, this cold will progress at the usual rate, or maybe even faster.

It’s Labour Day weekend, and although I do have a contract I’m working on, I do have the luxury of not having to work very much this 3-day weekend. This holiday falls on the last weekend of summer and ushers in School, Work, and general ‘Lets-Get-Down-To-It’ sort of things that we associate with the Fall season. We’ve had a spectacularly sunny summer, and it really was extraordinary, with months and months of sunshine, sunshine and more sunshine. That was unfortunate for those people who had to deal with wildfires to the East of us, but for those of us in the city or near the water, July and August have been a rarely interrupted succession of one beautiful day after another. Does this mean we are in for some weather comeuppance?  Will we see a January and February monsoon, or worse, lots of snow, like last year? Time will tell, I suppose. What I can say for sure is that for the first time in ages, the rain that we have (and there has been a little of it), is falling on a weekend. Rainy weekends hold their own charm for me; you don’t have to feel guilty about indoor pursuits like movies, TV, blogging, listening to iTunes or even cleaning up the place. I’m not missing any precious hours of vitamin D harvest, and it can be nice to be cozy, wrapped in a blanket, snoozing through some of those sniffles.

The end of the Summer really began a couple of weeks ago when Pam and I once again went to the PNE, which is in its last weekend right now. While we missed Dal Richards, (Canada’s answer to Guy Lombardo and Glen Miller and a living legend, still performing well into his 90′s), we did make it to see many of the animals (and on Opening Day, there are many of them):

The Opening Day crowds, brought out by the perfect weather were large:

We chatted with an old friend at the Home Improvement Pavilion, ate some of those famous little donuts:

and Pam got a bargain of 4 ears of roasted corn for the price of 1 (the line was so long, they were getting behind and she got a plate of not-quite-good-enough-for-1-serving ears):

We also went to the ‘Marketplace’ where you see all of those demonstrations of everything from Shammies to Blenders and ended up getting a Smart Living Steam Mop. We’ve since put it through it’s paces on our carpets, wood and tile at home and while it does not perform miracles, it does work pretty well, and we hope it will help us keep the place a little cleaner. We still do need new carpet, but that will hopefully come in the next few months or so.

So, with the season now clearly coming to an end, it’s time to return my attention back to this blog, which I’ve been giving a bit less attention this summer. With that, I’m trying to once again look at the new Font technology that will be coming soon to a web page on your screen…

Squishy Fonts?

I’ve tried some different Typekit fonts, and it seems as if the body text is always looking a bit squished. I’m convinced it’s not the fonts themselves, but the metrics I’ve specified on the original Georgia font (which is what older browsers see when they view my pages). I’ll keep at it, but for reference, here are the fonts as they appear on the TypeKit Editor page:

As you can see, the new font, Luxi (Sans and Serif) are not supposed to be that squishy, so I’ll have to work on the original CSS (and do so without ruining the look of the page for older browsers. Backward compatibility without messing up the new fonts is going to be one of the challenges for us using these new fonts, I guess.