Too-Much-Zucchini Bread

Man this was good! I made it Sunday, thinking the kids could take some for school lunch. Sadly, it didn't last until Monday. Even sadder is that they're not the ones who ate most of it...

I used a simple spice-zucchini bread recipe (I think it was Bittman's; I use tons of his recipes and customize them as necessary). When I realised I had too much zucchini I said what the heck and tossed it in anyway. That was the moistest zucchini bread I've ever had. Everyone in the family liked it; even the zucchini-hater.

The crust kept it from being just a damp mess. The crust is, well, crusty, which makes it hard to cut without crushing the extremely moist insides, but adds a lovely textural contrast.

Backyard Harvest

One of my favorite flavours is just-picked tomatoes, still warm from the sun. It's a childhood memory that's been reawakened now that we're growing our own once again. (Previous attempts at my old house were less than fruitful due to insufficient sun, but my present back yard is sunny and well drained.)


Homegrown food has become a luxury but I'm remembering how easy it is to add a few plants. The hard part is remembering to water them! Being able to wander outside, snacking on fresh warm miracles is one of life's treats that beats anything a restaurant has to offer. If you plant from seed, a whole backyard's worth of plants would probably cost less than one fancy restaurant meal. And you can eat in your pyjamas!

This year we had almost no rain for two months. The lavender, tomatoes, rosemary and sunflowers love it. They're abundantly productive, and the tomatoes are deliciously sweet. The alpine strawberries are even sweeter—little flavour bombs so strong you'd swear they were artificially flavour-boosted.

My carrots also came up in bunches, probably because I planted them too close (: Let's call it an experiment in plant sculpturing... yea, that's it. I'll invoke my creative license.

So here's to local food and my one-yard diet. I'll be outside snacking if anyone needs me.

Smoked salmon, cream cheese, pesto & caper omelet

The title says it all. What a way to greet the day!

Green onion & mushroom omelet

today's breakfast

Tofu scramble with black beans and sour cream

I made a tofu & egg scramble with black beans for breakfast. Topped it with parmesan and a bit of sour cream. Holy protein batman. Good pre-run meal.

Apple crumble for breakfast

after dinner we have it with whipped cream

I believe that each day is a gift and should be celebrated as such. So today, a school holiday for the kids, we had popovers and apple crumble for breakfast. But wait a minute, you say, apple crumble is a dessert and as such neither healthy nor a desirable way to start the day.

Before you allow this kneejerk response to carry the day, let's compare. Bacon and eggs is not a bad breakfast, but what's in your bacon? Apart from all the salt and smoke (even natural smoke isn't good for you), there's a lot of protein.

Cereal? Don't get me started. There's either tons of sugar, or kids add it. And not much protein or flavour. In most cereals, almost all of the calories are from fat or carbohydrates. All those carbs get you going but you crash an hour later. The milk saves the day, nutritionally speaking.

Pancakes aren't much better, and if you're picking up breakfast from a drive-thru window you're just kidding yourself. (Nutritionally as well as the dis-healthiness of eating on the run, oblivious to your food and body.)

I recently read an article by a fitness consultant who said she eats dessert only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and has cut all other sugar out of her diet.

Blek. How over-regulated and well, dull. Life is a celebration - eat dessert every day. And as the old saying goes, life is uncertain - eat your dessert first. I reward myself for all the hard work I do and energy I expend in service by eating well and loving what I eat.

So popovers with apple crumble: using Bittman's recipes from How to Cook Everything they contain eggs, milk, flour, oats, brown sugar, six cups of apples, six tablespoons of butter, a teaspoon or less of white sugar, salt and cinnamon. Not bad.

Not made by machines or kept warm under heat lamps. Not dried out and tasteless but warming and desirable. Textures were great: the apples were softened with a bit of not-quite-crunch in the middle, oat topping was crunchy, the popovers their usual combination of doughy and crispy. (One of my big complaints about machine-made food is textural blandness.)

Each kid ate about the equivalent of one egg and one apple, and I'm sure less flour than a piece of toast. They loved it and felt very special to have such a 'decadent' breakfast. Lovely. Now isn't that what life's all about?

Popovers for breakfast

We had a lovely morning, lounging in our jammies, watching tv or drinking coffee, depending on age and proclivity. I made popovers - my favorite weekend breakfast. They are pretty healthy but feel slightly decadent. Delicious with coffee or hot chocolate, and we pair them with fruit or fruit butter, depending on what's around.

I use Bittman's recipe from his How to Cook Everything book. I love his recipes because they stand up to meddling - in fact he recommends and suggests variations. To me the mark of a good recipe is its ability to be messed with. I often add savoury things like cheese or bacon. Today I added some herbes de province - wow, what a difference yet somehow still subtle.

I've been experimenting with the fat I use - the recipe calls for oil or butter. Previously I used butter in the recipe and to grease the pan, but because you place the pan in the oven to pre-heat them, the butter would burn and get nasty.

So I switched to olive oil as grease and butter in the recipe. Around the same time, I moved from a gas-oven kitchen to electric. In the new house, my popovers weren't rising - they were dense little hockey pucks, and I wasn't sure of the cause. Was it the new stove, olive oil, or possibly old flour?

I also have grapeseed oil and have been using it where I want lighter oil and less taste, or oil that can stand a higher heat without burning. (I use it as my facial moisturizer - yes really. It's better than any official beauty product I've ever tried -  and I've tried most.)

I substituted the grapeseed oil in both the recipe and as pan grease. Ta da. Beautifully-rising popovers that are hollow in the center of their bottoms. My youngest felt a little ripped-off that hers was empty, as she put it.

The lightness of a popped popover makes it easier for morning digestion, and definitely looks prettier.

Pear Butter

...with cinnamon sugar sprinkled over top.

Popovers with fruit butter

Made popovers for breakfast. They were perfect. So good I forgot to photograph them! I can't believe it. Literally the best tasting and most attractive I've ever made. So here's the last one left with a blob of the fruit butter I made the other day. Man, they were good.

Pretty healthy too, although admittedly heavy on the flour/carb side. But a nice warm and warming way to start a rainy sunday. It's not cold enough to turn on the heat yet, but the oven's warmth sure is cosy. Coffee, writing and popovers - what more can I ask for?

Oh, forgot to mention, the recipe is Bittman's, from his How to Cook Everything. (An excellent book if you ask me, this gen's Joy - which I still use for their excellent Equivalents Table.)