Flexi-Bendy Weekend

I've been doing yoga (mostly Hatha) off and on for a few years now.*  The last year or so, I've found a studio I really like, with classes at prices I can afford - especially the community classes.  Community classes are great because they are generally easy-going, inexpensive, and part of the money goes to local charities.
I don't get to go as often as I'd like to, in part because I work out in the outskirts of the city and the commute back doesn't always have good timing.  So, I mostly end up doing the Saturday classes.
However, this past weekend, I went to the Yoga Conference with a good friend of mine, who goes to many more classes than I.  She managed to get some free passes into the show (hooray free!) and I had a really good time.
They had a 'yoga garden' (surrounded by planters filled with flowers and cedar trees) in the middle of the main floor where different teachers led free half-hour sessions throughout the day.  We managed to go to three of these sessions early in the day.  The first was led by Jason Crandell, the second by Todd Norian and the third by Seane Corne. 
Like anything, it was nice to hear from different teachers, with different styles and different perspectives on things.
The free sessions got really crowded really quickly, so we decided to check out the vendors after Seane Corne's session.  I managed to score a new mat & towel from Kulae.  Their mats are made from an environmentally friendly, biodegradable material and it is super light! My old mat was a cheapo one, and is starting to disintegrate, so I'm excited to break in the new one.
My only complaints about the vendor area would be that many of them were starting to run low on stock when it was only the second day of the event, and some of the American vendors were only taking cash or cheques.  This was a bit weird for a Canadian event, since debit/Interac is such a pervasive part of the Canadian landscape now.
All in all, I got to spend an awesome day, with an awesome friend, and learned some new things - even though I did not get to see Woody Harrelson.

*Note: I am not as flexi-bendy as the lady in the photo. Not by a long shot.

Cheesy Veggie Pie

I had this great plan this morning where I was going to make homemade poptarts today.  Then I slept in until 11:30 am.  I also had a ton of other household chores to do, so the pastry plan got shelved for this weekend.
However, since I had some frozen, pre-made pie crusts in the freezer, I decided to make a vegetable pie for dinner.  Thank you Tenderflake, for making vegetable shortening pie crusts for lazy vegetarians like me.

Here's how you can make your own cheesy vegetable pie:

Preheat the oven to about 350F and take out your prepared pie crust.  Then, start laying your vegetables in the pie.  I tend to throw in whatever I have available in the house. 

Here you can see corn, carrot slices, cauliflower, wax beans, and diced red pepper.  You could also add broccoli, diced potato, green beans, leeks, etc.  If you have any fresh herbs, I would throw them in now as well.  I happened to have some basil in the house, so I threw in some of that.  Oregano, sage or thyme would also be nice.

Once your pie is mostly filled with your veg, it's time to start making your cheese sauce.  Throw a big blob of butter or margarine in a sauce pan, and then add some diced onion once the fat has melted.

Once the onions have softened, add a clove of diced garlic and cook a few moments more until the garlic has softened.  Then add a spoonful of flour and stir to combine (you want to make a roux at this point).  Once the flour & fat have combined, pour in about a cup of milk and stir.  It should look something like this:

While the milk is heating, grate a huge bunch of cheese.  I used marbled cheddar because that's what I had in the house, but you can use whatever flavour of cheese you like.  I think I ended up with about a cup of grated cheese.

Once your milk has warmed, add your cheese to the mixture, and stir until it melts and turns into  a smooth, cheesy sauce.

Once your sauce is lovely and smooth, pour it over the vegetables in your pie.  You don't want the liquid level to be too high, or it might boil over the edges.

Now it's time to make the crumb topping.  Take 2 tablespoons of cold butter or margarine and put it in a bowl.  Add about an equal amount of flour, and any herbs or spices you like (I added pepper and oregano).

Then use a fork to combine & mash it all together until you get a crumbly mixture.

Spread your crumb mixture evenly over the top of your pie, and then sprinkle a layer of grated parmesan over that.

Bake for about 40 minutes, until the vegetables are cooked through, and the top is browned and crisp.

Let it cool before you cut it, or the cheese sauce will ooze out of the pie and turn into a runny mess.  If you do let it cool though, you get nice neat slices of pie to enjoy.  I served my pie with a nice side salad, and it made a great dinner.

I Love the Way the Apartment Smells When I Bake

Sunday is usually baking and chores day for me and today was no exception.  A ton of laundry gone completed, as well as cleaning the guinea pig cage, and then the mess they left after floor time.  In between those chores, I got my baking done. 
I started out by making an apple-blueberry pie.  I admit that I was really lazy with this and used store-bought crust that I've had in the freezer.  Unfortunately, it's not a pretty looking pie, as the top crust tried to crumble apart when I was laying it on.  Fortunately for me, it smells amazing!

While the pie was baking, I started on my bread dough.  I decided to a yeast bread instead of a quick bread and I opted to flavour it with dried oregano, rosemary, and fresh black pepper.
My main problem with yeast breads is that we live in a basement apartment, so it's a little cooler than most homes, which can affect the rise of the bread.  Here's my little trick to counteract that fact.

That's right! Stick your bowl of dough, covered with a tea towel, and a glass of freshly boiled water into the microwave.  Then shut the door and set the microwave's timer to go off when the rise should be done.  An added bonus to this method is that you still get to use the oven for other things.

Here's the bread rising away!  Rise bread, rise! You must double in size! 
When the bread was done the first rise, I gave it another little knead, put it on a cookie sheet, and left it to rise again.  When it was done that rise, it got some shallow cuts across the top, and a dusting of cornmeal, and we were finally ready to bake!

The thing I love about this recipe is that the total baking time is only 40 minutes or so.  After waiting around all afternoon for dough to rise, a quick bake is important to me!  Especially when the house smells so delicious you want to eat the air while it's baking. 

Here's the finished product!  It turned out to be a much bigger ball of bread than I expected and I can't wait to cut into it. 

Black Pepper & Pesto crackers

Today, I decided to give making homemade crackers a try.  I have a book, which has a basic cracker recipe in the first chapter.

Of course, I'm terrible when it comes to things with basic directions.  I rarely do things "plain".  Seeing has how I had a jar of pesto that we made a little bit ago in the fridge that needed using up, I decided to make pesto crackers.
Like all doughs, the basic steps are the same:
1) Mix dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, fresh black pepper)

In a separate bowl, mix together your wet ingredients (egg & oil - I should have probably added my pesto to this as well, but I decided to add it in later).

Then mix the two together until crumbly.

You then want to add cold water, a little bit at a time, until the dough comes together.  This was the point I added the pesto as well.

You then want to split the dough in half, and let it rest/firm up in the refridgerator for at least a half hour.

After you've let it rest, roll it out to about 1/8" thick, trying to maintain a rectangular shape (yes, I'm a dork who keeps a special 'kitchen' ruler).

Then, cut it into any size or shape you like. You could also use cookie cutters, or even a glass to get different shapes. You could also stamp them with a decorative stamp instead of pricking the dough with a fork.  I was feeling lazy, and decided to do squares and rectangles. Here's the squares all laid out on their baking sheet.

Here are the rectangles.

I brushed mine with a little bit of water, and sprinkled some extra black pepper over the tops.  Then I baked them at 375F until they were nice & golden & crispy, rotating the sheets every 4 minutes or so.

Now, if you want to store them, let them cool completely before putting them in a jar or other airtight container.  Otherwise, you might get condensation in the jar, and not so crisp crackers.  I'm not ashamed to say that I ate a bunch of them right off the bat.  They were delicious.

Mmmm . . . overexposed cracker.

In Honour of St. Patrick's Day

In honour of St. Patrick's Day, I bring you an interesting, and little-known fact related to the Irish.

The term "boycott" came about thanks to them.

It turns out that boycott is one of those words that is based on an actual, historical figure - in this case, one Charles Cunningham Boycott.  Charles Boycott was an Englishman who worked as a land agent for one Lord Erne.  Most of the land was rented out to tenant farmers (as was large chunks of Ireland at the time).

After a couple of bad harvests in the late 1870s, a movement that had started in the early 1850s to get fair treatment of tenant farmers had started to pick up steam.  However, rather than advocating violence, the movement said that greedy landlords and their agents should be ostracized from their communities. Here's where we start relating back to Charles Boycott.

In 1880, the tenants on the land he was managing demanded a significant rent reduction after several bad harvests in a row.  Boycott's employer, Lord Erne, refused.  Boycott then started sending out notices demanding the rents, and set about evicting eleven of the tenant families.
Within a few days, Boycott had been completely shut out by the whole community.  The staff (maids, butlers, gardeners, farm labourers, etc) refused to show up for work.  Shopkeepers wouldn't serve him.  The postman refused to deliver his mail.  He had to start having supplies shipped to himself by boat from another community so that they wouldn't be turned back on the road into town.

Then, Boycott wrote a letter about his predicament to a major newspaper - The Times.

By the time the newspapers, and the local community, were done, British troops had been involved and Charles Cunningham Boycott was forced to return to England.

Here's the wikipedia entry on Charles Boycott.

Here's the wikipedia entry on boycott in general.

I hope you'll enjoy sharing that Boycott was a real person who ended up on the wrong side of the Irish this holiday.

Happy Pi Day!

Today is March 14th.  This date can also be written as 3.14 . . . which means that it's pi (as in math) day!
There are plenty of math related jokes around the web, and not to mention some fantastic pie recipes, so I thought I would share some related links.

Wil Wheaton's blog has a link to a great song about pi.  It's matheriffic!

Wanda's Pie in the Sky is a great little bakery in Toronto that's filled with delicious things - especially pie.

Canadian Living's website has a ton of recipes for pie.  Here's one of their blueberry pie recipes.

The wikipedia page about pi is full of mathematical content.  It also has some fun facts like who holds the world record for reciting the digits of pi.

Then there's All-Recipes and their huge database of pie recipes.

Hopefully, you had time to eat some pie, while celebrating all things math today!

The Damp Season

Saturday, it rained.  Then it rained some more.  Then it kept on raining.  I decided to suck it up and go to yoga class.  After all, it would give me an opportunity to not wear my snowboots and instead where my awesomesauce rainboots. You can see them here.  I've had these boots for a couple of years, but I love them.
On the way home from yoga, I started to think that my feet were feeling decidedly on the damp side.  By the time I got home, I realized the sad truth.  My skull & sword pirate rainboots were no longer waterproof. 
On the upside, this gave me an excuse to get some shiny new rainboots!  I ended up buying boots from a Canadian company - Kamik (my new boots are blue).  Some of you might remember Kamik's winter boot line from your childhood (they were right up there with the old school Sorel's for dealing with snow in the 80's & 90's). The boots are made in Canada, have a waterproof guarantee AND they recycle them when their life of keeping your feet dry is over!
I find the idea of getting your boots recycled when their life is over really fascinating and awesome and it makes me wonder why more companies don't do this sort of thing.
The sad thing is that I have not yet had a chance to test out my new boots.  Sometime Saturday evening the weather remembered that this is Canada and went back to snowing and hasn't quit since.  Back to snowboots for me :(