This month marks the 4th Anniversary of my first post. A good time to rethink or retool.

It’s been a terrific four years of making improvements at Keats View Cottage, and along the way we’ve made good friends and great memories.  We’ve even started to make a bit of money through summer rentals, which is icing on the cake.  That damn quilt, by the way, still isn’t done.

We’ve answered some important questions: Is the Gibsons area where we’d like to spend at least part of our retirement years?  Yes, and I think we will start to shift operations over that way within the next five years or so.  

Do we need a bigger/grander place?  No, simple really is better — though the lightly insulated walls and single pane windows of the cottage may be a little too spartan for a place where we hope to live at least 50% per cent of the time, year round. 

We sometimes take a long walk around nearby Hopkins Landing, wondering if a future home isn’t waiting quietly for us in that neighbourhood. We also sometimes talk of rebuilding on the Keats View property, but I feel overwhelmed when I try to think of what would be involved:  Instant decision fatigue.   

And then there is this blog.  160 plus posts and just shy of 50,000 visits over these four years. It remains a treasured record of our efforts and achievements, and a repository of photos, recipes and ideas, both good and questionable.  

But now that most of what we planned to do is done, it is increasingly rare that something blog-worthy comes along. I don’t think anyone really cares to know that I am busy cutting back the bamboo again . . . and, like every year, contemplating bambooicide.  Having done our best to acentuate the place’s natural charms and make it comfortable, we reach a place of diminishing returns for big, interesting projects.

The urchins are near grown now and they talk of coming to the cottage more than they actually do, as their school work, social lives and hobbies  increasing engage them.  So we are in a transitional time. We can’t drag them along, and we can’t really leave them for more than an occasional night, so our cottage time is somewhat limited at the moment. When we do get there, we try to do less, enjoy more. 

If everything goes to plan – and it may very well not – I will spend the month of June at Keats View, on a self-funded sabbatical to work on a personal project.  It is a very happy thought. I love the long days of June, and would be very happy to spend an hour or two a day working in the garden, instead of 10 hours over one weekend.  

Meanwhile, I plan to reduce my blog posts to about one per month.  Rather than scratching my head to come up with some fresh content or feeling guilty about great gaps between posts, I’m making it official.  When there is something worth writing about, I’ll write.  Check back in early February for my annual special Valentines Day recipe  – The Food of Love - It is a recipe worth having, I assure you. 

I encourage you to click the “follow” button.  That way, you will be alerted when I do post, and won’t have to waste time checking back. Since my posts will be so infrequent, you need not fear being inundated with alerts!  

Thanks for sharing our adventure.  And please stop by again.

Looking forward to spring at the cottage

Easy Tricky Cherry Almond Shortbread

You know one. You might be one:  A person who just doesn’t get the whole shortbread thing. 

I walk a fine line there myself.

I love my mom’s: she pipes it into charming wreathes with a cookie press I am far too uncoordinated to master (or too lazy to try?) I know a few others who produce a tasty cookie,  But many shortbread recipes leave me cold. Too dry, not sweet enough – sorry, I am picky.

This is my family’s favourite shortbread recipe. Brown-sugar sweet, and with bits of marashino cherry adding moisture and interest. The recipe is dead easy and a little tricky all at the same time.  Intrigued? 

The tricky bit comes in getting the cherries distributed in the dough without turning your dough pink. Then, you have to pack the dough into saran-wrapped cylinders to chill in the fridge, again without de-juicing the cherries. After that, its just slice and bake. 

Chopped frozen cherries get mixed in last.

Having a Kitchen Aid mixer helps a lot. I used to make this by hand and could never get the dough sufficiently well-mixed. My strategy this year was to drain and chop my cherries, then freeze them in a single layer on a sheet of parchment.

They came straight out of the freezer and into the mixer with the toasted nuts. With Saran wrap sheets waiting, those cherries were mixed in, wrapped up and into the fridge in moments, with very little pink leakage. 

INGREDIENTS
 1 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups flour

1/2 cup marashino cherries, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup blanched silvered almonds, lightly toasted and cooled.

METHOD

Cream butter in mixer. Add sugar gradually, then flour gradually.

A drop of almond extract would be optional at this point.

Fling in the toasted nuts and chopped (frozen) marashinos.

Remove half of dough to a sheet of saran, form into a fairly uniform log, pressing quite tightly, then roll up in the food wrap. On a hard surface and using hands, roll log dough back and forth a few times to make it as round as possible and compact the dough a little more. Then pop it in the fridge overnight or for up to a week. Repeat with other half of dough. 

When chilled, unwrap and slice with sharp knife into quarter-inch slices and place on parchment lined tray.

Bake 12- 15 minutes at only 325 degrees and high in oven. Remove from oven when edges have begun to brown. Cool on sheet for a few minutes before removing to wire rack.  Makes 4 dozen.

Easy on your pocketbook but a bit sticky on your fillings. You've been warned.

Oh dear, it has been awhile.  I’ll try to make up for it, starting with this super easy and inexpensive recipe for sponge toffee. It makes a big panful for gifts or sharing.  If you pine for Crunchie Bars, you will love this. It’s also variously known as sea-foam, hokey pokey and honeycomb.

INGREDIENTS:

One cup granulated sugar

One cup corn syrup – dark is best, but yellow and white work too

One tablespoon vinegar

One tablespoon baking soda

METHOD

Line a 9×13 pan with foil and spray with cooking spray.

Combine sugar, corn syrup and vinegar in a LARGE heavy bottomed pot. This is important as you will end with a lot more volume than you begin with.

Cook over medium high heat until all sugar is dissolved, then bring it to a boil and cook without stirring until a candy thermometer registers 300 degrees or just a little higher.  Don’t have a candy thermometer? I used my digital meat thermometer and it worked fine. You can always cook it ‘old school’ and use the cold water testing method, in which case you are aiming for the “hard crack” stage.

Once there, stir in baking soda thoroughly. The mixture will foam up, at least tripling in size. Quickly scrape it into your prepared pan and allow to cool completely before removing and breaking into bite-sized pieces. 

If desired, melt some chocolate in a glass bowl in the microwave or in a double boiler, then dip one end of each piece, and set on wax paper or parchment to cool.  Best if consumed in 48 hours or store in sealed container in cool dry place.

This single shrub has monopolized the sun, harboured invaders like English Ivy and Morning Glory and crowded the paths from day one.  My initial timid trims gave way to repeated efforts to keep the top shoots under control, but on this particular day, it was like I was seeing it for the first time.  I knew I couldn’t kill it if I tried, so why not  give the girl a serious haircut?  Luckily, I remembered to take out my phone and take a few pictures before I started…

From one side . . .

. . . and from the other side.

 

From one side . . .

. . . and from the other side.

What Cottager had to haul away when he got up from his nap.

Now, what to do about the stump? It is fairly degraded, and Cottager is of the opinion that we could tear it out easily. I, on the other hand, like the idea of chopping enough of a hole in its soft gooey center to hide a nice pot with some trailing flowers in the spring.  O!  and some small white lights for the laurel branches, I think.

Early morning lights from the Langdale ferry terminal (right) and Soames Hill (left)

Every six or eight weeks, or so,  Cottager and I get up very early on a weekend morning and head over to the cottage, alone and without any particular purpose. Sometimes we stay over night and sometimes we return on one of the last ferries of the day. Usually we park near Horseshoe Bay and walk or bike over.

Since we get up very early midweek, you’d think this would be the last thing we would want to do, but its absolutely wonderful!

We are up around five and on the road by 6.  We stop to grab a Starbucks coffee – the only time I have one anymore, so really a treat.  It is lovely driving through dark and near deserted streets to the ferry terminal. Once there, we wait for the ferry to appear, as if by magic, in its berth. On board, the other passengers are mostly young sports teams and more ‘seasoned’ travellers like ourselves who know the pleasures of an early start. 

The Queen of Surrey is redolent with the smell of the All Aboard breakfast, and maple syrup in particular. The bathrooms are scented with a vaguely tutti-frutti deodorizer I never smell anywhere else.  The most unlikely things can become dear to us when we associate them with pleasant events!

Just before eight a.m., the crew call “Sixteen” which signals arrival announcements.  The lights of Langdale and the silhouette of Soames Hill appear in the semi-darkness.

Since this early ferry is rarely busy, unloading is a breeze.  If we have our car, as we did on this recent visit because we were moving some furniture, we pull into our driveway at Keats View Cottage about 5 minutes after the ramp is in place.  We unload, light a fire, turn on the baseboard heaters and make ourselves a hot breakfast — usually waffles or omelet - and on the table within half an hour. 

And then the rest of the day is entirely at our disposal: Read; nap; work on projects, watch a movie; walk into town… Unless the weather is truly bad, I head out to the garden, because I never seem to get enough fresh air in a normal week largely divided between home and office.

Vegetable soup, foccacia and cowboy cookies

What a week!  High demands at work and at home:  Travel organizing, charity events, social planning, costume making and a hundred small fires to put out. How to recover?  Shopping doesn’t work for me. I get into the kitchen and whip up some soup, bread or sweets.  And today, since it was such a crazy week, I made all three.  

First a double batch of vegetable soup – please admire my awesome Lee Valley kettle! Next, my friend Gillian’s superb foccacia, and finally, these super easy Cowboy Cookies.  I like this recipe because all of the measurements are round :  1 cup of this and 2 cups of that.  Also, it makes lots.  Not the five dozen advertised, but lots.  Even better if you add butterscotch chips instead of chocolate, but today, alas, I had none. 

The recipe suggests these cookies need 8 to 10 minutes in the oven. In my oven they take 12 minutes to achieve perfect doneness.  I use a standard cookie scoop but I suspect “Bonniebelle” makes a smaller cookie, which would account for a shorter cooking time and a higher yield.  Do try not to overbake! 

Outside it is dark and really rainy. Inside we have good food and cats to comfort us.

Bacon is apparently the ‘it’ food these days – at least with young men. I read an anecdote in Maclean’s magazine just prior to Thanksgiving concerning a turkey-farming MP who puts pulpy orange juice and soy sauce into the roasting pan as a gravy starter and covers his turkey breast with slices of bacon for extra flavour and moistness. Without more information that this, I decided to have a go. I would say the bacon was definitely an addition; however, the orange juice/soy sauce burned in the pan and took several soak/scrubs to conquer. I’d stocked up on some gravy mixes anyway (Sorry, I can’t hear your boos and hisses) so no harm done to the dinner.

Strips of bacon keep the turkey moist and add flavour.

We cooked our turkey at the cottage on Saturday, so we could indulge ourselves in cold turkey sandwiches for lunch on Sunday and hot turkey sandwiches for dinner. When the turkey was resting and I was mashing the potatoes – which didn’t get into the picture somehow – I sent Cottager out on a secret mission to the Bayview Szechuan restaurant in the village for a container of chicken chow mein. He was back just as I finished carving the bird.

I don’t fuss with setting a beautiful table when we don’t have guests since my crew is fairly food-centric. It was just nice to have a quiet family meal at the end of a day working out-of-doors at our fall clean-up tasks. The chow mein was a surprisingly nice addition. I believe we have a new tradition. Hopefully one that will keep my boys coming home for Thanksgiving dinner.

Turkey and chow mein with all the trimmings

They are available seasonally at Costco – usually around Christmas time. Last week I saw them featured at Thrifty Foods: $5.99 for 113 grams! Much, much cheaper and really easy to make them yourself – either in multiple batches as gifts for the holidays, as a quick treat with drinks or deluxe salad topping when guests are expected. Here’s my version. Let me know what you think.

INGREDIENTS

SAUCE
2 Tbsp orange juice
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp white sugar
2 Tbsp butter (best) or margarine
Pinch of salt

ADD IN
1 and 1/2 cups whole pecans
1 tsp finely grated orange peel aka zest
1/2  tsp Lawry’s brand coarsely ground pepper or to taste
1/2 cup dried cranberries

METHOD
Heat oven to 300 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and grease very lightly with butter or cooking spray.

In a medium sauce pan combine sauce ingredients and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly until bubbling. Cook one minute longer, then remove from heat. Stir in zest, then pecans and cranberries and keep stirring until all nuts are lightly coated.

Spread onto prepared cookie sheet and separate nuts with a fork. Sprinkle liberally with the coarse ground pepper. Bake 15 -20 minutes, stirring once. Cool and then store in an airtight container – if you don’t just eat the whole lot!

When my kids came home from elementary school that day they were ecstatic. By the time Cottager came home from work, both boys and the cat ran to the door to greet him.  Frank always met us at the door from then on  – even after the boys ceased to do so.  He had some quirks – but in our opinion, he was the best of cats.

Last September we introduced a female tortoiseshell into the family. Meekus was a crazy kitten, and she drove Frank to distraction with her stealth attacks, but they came to an understanding in time.

Meekus and Frankie

Sadly, over the winter, Frank began to lose weight. Tests and treatments were in vain, and every possibility was eventually eliminated except cancer. By June he was in such poor shape that we had to do right by him.

Over the summer we mourned and eventually came around to discussing  getting another cat, as Meekus seemed lonely.  A friend at work put us on to VOKRA – Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association, and through them, we found our new guy, Freddy.  Like all VOKRA adoptees, he came to us from a foster home, where he was known and loved. 

Freddy on his first day in his forever home.

VOKRA does fantastic work rescuing cats and kittens. If you can support them please do, and if you have been thinking of opening your home to a new pet have a look at their website for information that will help you assess whether cat adoption is right for you. They have an on-line gallery of cats looking for forever homes. 

Meekus and Freddy

Officially it ended last week. But the weekend was pretty warm, even when it started to bucket rain yesterday.

Now; however, the jig is clearly up: cooler, drizzlier and greyer. My thoughts turn to boots whether I will it or not. Stew is on the stove, muffins are in the oven and the cats have crashed. Need more evidence?