Plenty Epicurean Pantry

Corn Husk Boats (with roast chicken, gravy, roasted vegetables and sautéed mushrooms, and finished with cream sherry). Photo and meal by Shelora Sheldan.

Hey, sailor!

If you’re not up for making tamales, dried corn husks, a common wrapper used for those delectable snacks, can be reconfigured as a fun container to hold rice or salad.

Bobbie & George visiting Hungary

Working at one of the greatest little food emporiums Victoria ever had, leaves me with thoughts of food as Father’s Day (June 20, 2010) approaches…hmmmm what would our customers consider for their Father’s Day purchases?

My next thoughts are about my own Dad’s favorites and what he would have liked.  I think it would be our peanut butter filled pretzels and an authentic black licorice rope.  I remember days of licorice (all kinds but mostly black), pretzels, peanut brittle, all sorts of nuts and sunflower seeds in the shell. Those were saved for (open window) long road trips when I was a kid in the backseat of the blue Buick…ducking those sticky shells flying back at me!  My Dad was an elementary school principal and as a family we always had entire summers off.  I was fortunate to have a family that loved spontaneous travel and adventure.  I did far more than the average kid and realize now how lucky I was.

If I had to think what I have inherited from my Dad, I might be inclined to think it’s his silly (perhaps not always tasteful) sense of humour.  Dad’s was borderline corny!  I hope mine is not so bad.  Honestly though, I find myself resorting to humour sometimes more than I should.  Blame it on Dad. I love you Dad.

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The native cuisine of Hungary is one of the most diversified and flavorful of Europe yet most people associate it only with goulash and paprikash. Among the many signature dishes Hungary is renowned for, the simple lecso (pronounced ‘lecho’) seem to fly under the radar perhaps because it is used so widely and so much the basis for stews, sautés and sauces that making it is akin to boiling an egg to Hungarians.

A healthy, vitamin packed dish of stewed peppers, tomatoes and onions that tastes superb and is endlessly versatile, quick and easy to make to eat fresh or for canning in jars, rates it as Hungarian soul food. (It certainly is in my soul)

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Recently, I borrowed a book that I’d noticed at D’Ambrosio Architecture & Urbanism, where my wife Erica works.  Thanks to Gwen and Franc for loaning me their copy of The Great Good Place: cafes, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they get you through the day (Ray Oldenburg. 1991, Paragon House).

For a book about cafes, bars, and hangouts it wasn’t as rollicking a read as I imagined it might be, none-the-less Oldenburg’s case for “the informal public life and the Great Good Places essential to it” sheds light on some fundamental elements of culture and society that too often we overlook.  He points out that,

Great Civilizations, like great cities, share a common feature.  Evolving within them and crucial to their growth and refinement are distinctive informal public gathering places.  These become as much a part of the urban landscape as of the citizen’s daily life and, invariably, they come to dominate the image of the city.  Thus, its profusion of sidewalk cafes seems to be Paris, just as the forum dominates one’s mental picture of classic Rome.  The soul of London resides in her many pubs; that of Florence in its teeming piazzas.  Vienna’s presence is seen and felt most within those eternal coffeehouses encircled within her Ringstrasse.  The grocery store-become-pub at which the Irish family does its entertaining, the bier garten that is father to more formal German organizations, and the Japanese teahouse whose ceremonies are the model for an entire way of life, all represent fundamental institutions of mediation between the individual and the larger society.

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There is nothing else as universal.  There is nothing else so powerful.  When you understand where your food comes from, you look at the world in an entirely different way.  I think that if you really start caring about the world in this way, you see opportunities everywhere.  Wherever I am, I’m always looking to see what’s edible in the landscape.  Now I see Nature not just as a source of spiritual inspiration - beautiful sunsets and purple mountain majesties - but as the source of my physical nourishment.  And I’ve come to realize that I’m totally dependent on it, in all its beauty and richness, and that my survival depends on it.

- Alice Waters, A Delicious Revolution, Center for Ecoliteracy (*this is one of my favourite articles about food)

We’ve recently received some copies of Alice Water’s new cookbook, In the Green Kitchen.

Alice Waters has been a champion of the sustainable, local cooking movement for decades.  To Alice, good food is a right, not a privilege.  In the Green Kitchen presents her essential cooking techniques to be learned by heart plus more than 50 recipes—for delicious fresh, local, and seasonal meals—from Alice and her friends.  She demystifies the basics including steaming a vegetable, dressing a salad, simmering stock, filleting a fish, roasting a chicken, and making bread. An indispensable cookbook, she gives you everything you need to bring out the truest flavour that the best ingredients of the season have to offer.

Contributors: Darina Allen * Dan Barber * Lidia Bastianich * Rick Bayless * Paul Bertolli * David Chang * Traci Des Jardins * Angelo Garro * Joyce Goldstein * Thomas Keller * Niloufer Ichaporia King * Peggy Knickerbocker * Anna Lappé & Bryant Terry * Deborah Madison * Clodagh McKenna * Jean-Pierre Moullé * Joan Nathan * Scott Peacock * Cal Peternell * Gilbert Pilgram * Clair Ptak * Oliver Rowe * Amaryll Schwertner * Fanny Singer * David Tanis * Poppy Tooker * Charlie Trotter * Jerôme Waag * Beth Wells

Five-by-Five fundraiser for Lifecycles

Support the great programs at Lifecycles and enjoy a fantastic locally-based dinner!

Explore your backyard’s rich terroir at the table through five gourmet courses from five farms and food producers in five distinct regions of southern Vancouver Island.

You can pair each course with award-winning cider, learn about the unique terroir of the island, meet the five-star local food producers who are feeding you, tour the ciderhouse and bid on unique picnic experiences during a silent auction. All proceeds to benefit LifeCycles programming.

Also, Lifecycles is offering a Boulevard Gardening Workshop!

Lifecycles is hosting a Boulevard Gardening Workshop next Saturday, June 5th from 10-1pm in Fernwood. Come out to this workshop to learn- hands-on- how to build a boulevard garden! We will build a garden on a highly visible, unused boulevard in Fernwood, discussing issues around bylaws, watering, types of plants, theft, ownership and more. The workshop includes a walking tour of boulevard gardens in the neighborhood and concludes at Koffi for discussion and Q and A.

Cost is $10-15 sliding scale, but no-one will be turned away.

Find out more and RSVP at uahub@lifecyclesproject.ca or by calling (250) 383-5800.

Why is eating locally so important? Find out in You Are What You Eat, a great clip about community organic farms in B.C., and please join us this Wednesday (7 - 9 pm) for Table Talk at Haliburton Community Organic Farm.

Also,

• Haliburton Community  Organic Farm seeks an apprentice Market Gardener:

We are urgently seeking an Apprentice Market Gardener to run our market garden – from seed to sale - on about 1 acre of our Society land in 2010. For more information, see Haliburton Apprentice Market Gardener.

• View a list of local farmers markets from chef Heidi Fink.
• Here are some great local produce box programs:

Haliburton Community Organic Farm

FoodRoots

Good Food Box

Share Organics

Saanich Organics

We recently received a shipment of fantastic cookbooks and have displayed many of them on the front harvest table.  Here is one of my favourites:  Falling Cloudberries: a world of family recipes, by Tessa Kiros.

Tessa captures the spirit of her journeys around the world and her diverse cultural background as she celebrates home cooking across the continents.  This book is a pleasure to explore with vivid, colourful photos, stories about her family, and even a beautifully drawn family tree.  Our well thumbed copy at home is currently tabbed at the Oven-Baked Fish with Tomato & Parsley recipe on page 105.  It’s a simple comforting recipe good for a laid-back day.  Last year Eat Magazine posted Tessa’s Falling Cloudberries recipe for Honey Cake.

Falling Cloudberries is a great inspiration for engaging family in discussion about memories of food.  Tessa reflects on her mother’s experience with mushrooms:

My mother always talks of how they collected wild mushrooms in the woods in thin wooden plaited baskets.  The pines and birches and other trees were at their most splendid and the mushrooms were fantastic that same night, sautéed in butter with onions.

Visit last year’s Mother’s Day post for more cookbook ideas including a description of Apples Under The Bed: Recollections and Recipes from B.C. Writers and Artists.

Vernal Nest, Linda Jane Schmid

Near the till at Plenty we are honoured to be displaying Vernal Nest by Linda Jane Schmid, who works with us when not occupied painting and creating.  Below is her artist statement about this evocative piece:

As a child growing up in the Vancouver area, I was encouraged to look closely at the word around me. Playing in the forested ravine behind our house, going on family camping trips and to the beach in summer, I developed a deep affinity for the natural world.  As a young adult I lived in the Gulf Islands, embracing the values of a simple yet beauty-filled life, close to nature. My art-making practice developed through close observation of and delight in the myriad manifestations of natural forms.  This painting, “Vernal Nest”, has something to say about the animating forces of nature and the interconnectedness of all life.  In it I am expressing my perception and experience of the natural world as alive, mysterious, and articulate.

Linda Jane has shown other pieces at the store from time-to-time including her imaginative constructions of musical instruments (some of which are currently in the window next door at Studio Ryu), paintings from her Bee Series, and most recently from her Wind Series.

Vernal Nest evokes for me a sense of the simple utility and beauty of a home and it’s connections to place.  It makes me think of the words of William Morris where he speaks of clearing the home of all but that which is essential and beautiful.  At Plenty we recently received some William Morris cards from the Arts & Crafts Press including this one with his famous Golden Rule quote: 

Bobbie, co-worker and Plenty’s Alchemist of Activities, recently e-mailed a photo of the new filly (Lexie) and mama-mare (Ferrah) at the stables where she rides - a beautiful Mother’s Day photo:

Photo by Bobbie Holob of filly (Lexie) and mama-mare (Ferrah)