It’s been one of those fridge-purging days, coinciding with the end of a dark and rainy work week, making it an extra-depressing evening. The confluence of these events also left me with an intense desire to bake, a carton of buttermilk past its best-before date, and several black bananas in the freezer begging not to be thrown out.
Light and super moist banana snacking cake.
Sometimes, I want to go all out and put everything any child could dream of onto my French toast, pancakes, or waffles. But I never do, because if I did put ice cream, maple syrup, bananas, nutella, and nuts, I don’t think I would survive it.
Look ma, no ice cream!
These last few months have been a drag, when it comes to food and general well being. There was the darkness. The cold. The insane hours at work. The work-travel. Did I mention the darkness and the cold?
Forlorn statues in the University of Ottawa courtyard
Ottawa was stuck in a never-ending winter, and I was stuck in a rut. Again. It got so bad that I wasn’t even cooking anymore. Aspiring webcomic artist Abby Howard hailing from Montreal captured exactly what I was going through, in this comic: Sadness Brownies.
Time passes inevitably, and eventually, spring came. This week. And with spring, comes a general sense of renewal, and some sort of strange… empowerment. I dug out my juicer that had been in storage for a year, and my Juice for Life book by Ruth Tal Brown of Toronto’s Fresh Restaurant. It’s amazing what a difference sunlight and vitamins make in ones’ life!
Slowly but surely, I woke from my winter slump. As a first step towards reintegration into the kitchen, I decided to tackle head-on something I’ve been fearing for a long time: the mighty MACARON.
In the middle of a Gatineau suburb, I trudged on a Saturday afternoon to a cooking school run by a kooky-but-down-to-earth French man. I felt good, for the first time in a long time. And it helped that at the end of the class we got to take home a whole box (2 batches!) of macaron. If that didn’t cheer me up, I don’t know what will.
Since Saturday I have made 3 more batches of macaron and I am still not sick of them. Ladies and gentlemen, Momo’s back!
Success!
Posted in Writing
I really admire my mother, who has infinite patience and kitchen skills to make a thematically harmonious meal that feeds vegetarians and carnivores in under one hour, every day after work. Because her skills didn’t get passed on to me, I have had to work hard at finding recipes that are easy and adaptable for the carnivore.
Posted in Brunch, Flexitarian
Happy year of the snake, my friends! This past Sunday was the first day of the year in the Chinese calendar, and Chinese folks all over the world celebrated in a way that is not so different from North American Christmas celebrations. Traditions will vary from region to region, but the main ingredients are family time, food, and red envelopes. The thing that I most look forward to every year, is Lo Bak Go, a fried patty made of mashed daikon radish.
Steamed Lo Bak Go before it is pan fried
Recently we’ve been making a lot of hummus. That is all thanks to Deb Perelman from Smitten Kitchen who recently gave the world her hummus secret. I won’t spoil the surprise for you – you’ll have to go over there and see for yourself how one seemingly frivolous step in the process makes the smoothest hummus that has the texture of whipped butter. The first time we made it her way, before we tasted the final product, we said to ourselves that it was way too much effort to be made on a regular basis. Oh how wrong we were…
If I told you how many times I’ve made nut milk this past week I’d be embarrassed. But I wouldn’t have to tell you if you looked in my fridge. Because you will see that half of the typically cavernous space is filled with plastic containers of desiccated nut carcasses.
Fresh squeezed hazelnut-almond milk
Ms. Drew
Ms. Momo