Almond, Oat and Flax Thumbprint Cookies

I live in Nova Scotia, a place where practically summery hot days can occur just after a snowstorm.  Spring is more of a concept here than a reality, a very short season bridging winter and summer.  This spring has been s-l-o-w to get going, with really not a lot of dependable lovely sunshine.  Anyway, I'm not complaining, in two weeks the Union Street kitchen will be 40 degrees and sweltering.  
You can well imagine my excitement when my friend Stephanie told me on Saturday that fresh local strawberries had been spotted!   One of the Union Street girls just had a beautiful baby boy and I wanted to bring her strawberry something, but it was not to be: my favourite roadside stand just had a big "sold out" sign on it.  Oh well.  I made up these really good thumbprint cookies instead.  They are nutty with ground almonds and oats and whole wheat flour (sub in light spelt if you like).  I filled the pits of them with blueberry jam that I made last summer and some cinnamon-y apple butter that my good friend Melissa gave me.  You know when you're baking/cooking/creating something and it turns out exactly as good as you'd hoped?  Maybe better, even?  Then you keep looking/admiring/eating it, thinking, wow, that's really good. I can't believe that I made that.  So here you go, and welcome to the world, sweet little Joseph.

Almond, Oat and Flax Thumbprint Cookies
1 C. Roasted Almonds
1 C. Oatmeal
1 1/2 C. Whole Wheat Flour
1/4 C. Flax Meal (or grind flax seeds in a coffee grinder)
2 t. Baking Powder
1/4 t. Salt

1/4 C. Butter
1/4 C. Canola Oil
1/2 C. Brown Sugar
2 Eggs
2 t. Vanilla
Jam, Jelly, Apple Butter (it's fun and pretty to make different kinds)


Preheat oven to 350° and butter a large baking sheet or two.  In a food processor, grind the almonds until very finely chopped.  Tip into a bowl, then grind the oatmeal until it is a fine powder.  Add the oat flour to the bowl along with the whole wheat flour, baking powder and salt.  In a large bowl, cream the butter, canola oil and brown sugar.  Add the eggs and vanilla, beat until smooth, then add the flour mixture.  Stir (or mix with your hands) until combined.  Roll mixture into 1" balls and place about 3" apart on the cookie sheet.  Using your thumb, make a well in the middle of the cookie and fill it with jam.  Bake for 12-15 minutes, until puffed and firm.  Cool and enjoy.  These are great in your lunchbox (or so the kids told me!)

Daisy, how'd you get in there?

Merry Christmas Cookie!!!

On Sunday, my friend Stephanie hosted a cookie exchange. We've talked about it for years, but she took the bull by the horns last Christmas and now I hope it's here to stay. The idea is simple: everyone bakes 6 dozen cookies, then we get together for a potluck brunch and lay all the goodies out on the table to be admired. On their way out the door, each of us loads up a box with a variety of beautiful handmade cookies. There were chocolate orange stars and trees, iced snowflakes, sugar cookies with sprinkles, and Santa shortbreads. There were gingery molasses thins, pecan cakes dipped in powdered sugar and nut bars with dark and white chocolate (I brought those). There were buttery cookies with M&Ms! There are two kinds I can't name 'cause I haven't tasted them yet, but that's really only a matter of time. Minutes, actually. 

Women used to spend the better part of December baking. I remember my grandmother, Peg Osburn, mailing carefully packed handmade cookies from Pennsylvania at Christmas. The box contained at least a dozen varieties, one of which was the time consuming but much appreciated springerle, an anise-flavoured cookie that was imprinted with a special mold. No wonder I have a hard time with keeping things simple: in my family, the more complicated the effort, the more love is being demonstrated. Unless the sheer enormity of all those cookies to roll, cut, and bake, and the pile of dishes and the mess that results turns you into a complete bitch. 

Therefore, let's get real: find a few friends with good family recipes, make a simple cookie (bar cookies are the easiest) and get swapping!

Caramel Nut Bars with Cranberries and Chocolate

This recipe came out of tinkering with a Gourmet magazine pecan pie bar recipe.

 

3/4 C. Butter

2 C. Flour

1/2 C. Brown Sugar

1/2 t.  Salt

2 C. Mixed Salted Nuts

 1 C. Dried Cranberries

1/2 C. Butter

1 C. Brown Sugar

1/3 cup Honey

 2 T. Cream

1 oz. Dark Chocolate

1 oz. White Chocolate

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Cut 3/4 C. butter into 1/2-inch pieces. In a food processor process all ingredients until mixture begins to form small lumps. Sprinkle mixture into a 9x13 pan and press evenly onto bottom. Bake shortbread until golden, about 20 minutes.

In a heavy saucepan melt 1/2 C. butter and stir in brown sugar, honey, and cream. Simmer mixture, stirring occasionally, 1 minute and stir in nuts and cranberries. Pour nut mixture over hot shortbread and spread evenly. Bake in middle of oven until bubbling, about 20 minutes.  Remove from oven.  Melt the chocolates separately and use a spoon to drizzle each over the bars. Cool completely in pan and cut into 32 bars.

Merry Christmas!

A Wild and White Christmas!

Needle Felting at Stephanie's: Christmas Gathering #1

Well, there. It's less than two weeks from Christmas, and it's starting to get crazy. The Cafe is buzzing with parties and shopping lunches (we are, after all, just across the street from Bargain Harley's) and the kids are wrapping things up at school. We're also trying to make and buy meaningful gifts for each other, find the perfect tree right on our own land, make new traditions and keep up the old ones. My friends and family and I are trying to keep it “simple”. That's not easy for a group of women that is driven to make everything by hand, plans about ten gatherings during the month of December and have a collective brood of about twenty kids, give or take (we're all waiting for a special baby girl right now!). But this year is a little different. This year, we're putting the hustle and bustle into perspective, trying to be grateful for all we have and sharing that with another family halfway around the world. This year, our thoughts will be with a young father and his two children as he returns home to Liberia from a refugee camp in Ghana that he has called home for nearly twenty years. My sister Meagan and her partner Sean know him from their time spent volunteering at Buduburam and organized the gift of money for travel and accommodations once they arrive. We will all breathe a sigh of relief when they get there.

Thinking of this, everything else drops away and all I feel is unbelievably lucky. It seems a little frivolous to extol the virtues of local food when for so many there is no food at all, yet I truly believe that we can secure our future food security and improve the lives of all of us by making these choices when they are available. Maybe then our economy will improve to the point where we can begin to help and be a model for others. We have so much already. Finding joy and richness in the simple pleasures of good food, locally grown and fairly traded, is a reminder three times a day of how very grateful we should be.

Nova Scotia Wild Rice Salad

Perfect for Christmas buffets and potlucks, this salad feels very special. You can leave out the dressing and stuff your turkey with it!

1 C. Wild Rice (believe it or not, there is a source in Amherst!  Contact Dolphin Village to order)

4 ½ C. Water

1 C. White Rice

1 ½ t. Salt

½ C. each chopped Dates, Raisins, and Dried Cranberries

½ C. each Pecans, Sunflower Seeds, and Almonds, toasted and chopped

1 C. each diced Red Pepper, Celery, and Red Onion

½ C. Olive Oil

Juice of 1 Lemon

2 T. Red Wine Vinegar

1 clove Garlic, minced

¼ C. Honey

Salt and Pepper

Combine the wild rice, water and salt in a heavy medium pot. Cover, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer 20 minutes. Add the white rice and simmer another 25 minutes, then shut off the heat and let the rice sit, covered, while you prepare the rest of the salad. In a large bowl, combine the dates, raisins, cranberries, pecans, sunflower seeds, almonds, pepper, celery and red onion. Whisk together the remaining ingredients in a small bowl, then add this dressing to the large bowl. Add the warm rice and stir gently. Taste for salt and serve immediately, or let cool and refrigerate.

Emergency Salted Peanut Butter Chocolate Birthday Cake

Last Monday was my cousin Melyssa's birthday. At 6:00, I realized I hadn't planned to bring anything to eat to her celebration, and that wasn't gonna fly with the food appreciators and pregnant ladies expected to be in attendance. Also, I wasn't sure if anyone was bringing a birthday cake! I was due to arrive at the festivities an hour later. What to do?
I decided to go with a cake. I knew I had that Wacky Cake recipe somewhere, the one where you mix everything right in the pan and bake it, and it somehow turns into the most delicious chocolate cake ever. The recipe is weird because you don't even grease the pan and it calls for vinegar. Fortunately, it also uses oil instead of butter, which was good because I was fresh out. I threw the cake together (with love) in about 2 minutes and got it into the oven before dinner. As we ate our pizza, I contemplated how I would frost it. My standard in-a-hurry icing solution is to throw chocolate chips over the cake while it is still hot out of the oven, then smear it around a few minutes later until the cake is glazed. I still think this is a great way to go, but then I remembered that Melyssa loves sweet treats with a touch of salt. This is the recipe I came up with. By the way, it worked out really well because one of the guests was vegan and another was allergic to milk.

(Last Minute) Decadent Salted Peanut Butter Chocolate Birthday Cake (that is Also Vegan)
1 ½ C. Flour
1 C. Brown Sugar
½ C. Cocoa
1 t. Baking Soda
½ t. Salt
1 C. Water
6 T. Canola Oil
1 T. White Vinegar
1 t. Vanilla (I'm not going to say it must be pure, because I cheat at home)

Mix the flour, brown sugar, cocoa, soda and salt right in an 8” round cake pan. Add the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla and mix just until dry ingredients are moistened. Smooth into the pan and bake at 350 for 30 minutes, until cake tests done in the middle. While the Cake bakes, mix up the frosting:

½ C. Peanut Butter (Yum Bakery's is excellent)
3 C. Icing Sugar
1 T. Vanilla
Soy Milk (or regular)
1/3 C. Chocolate Chips
Fleur de Sel or some other fancy salt you spent too much money on and don't use enough

Cream the peanut butter, icing sugar and vanilla together, adding just enough soy milk by tablespoonfuls until the frosting is smooth.

When the cake comes out of the oven, don't even take it out of the pan. Spread the frosting over it, breaking all the rules about waiting for a cake to cool completely, blah blah blah. You're in a hurry, right? Sprinkle with the chocolate chips, then a pinch or two of salt. Rush to the party with the hot cake, which will cool on the way and be a big hit. Don't forget the candles!

Asparagus and Arugula

It seems perfect for me that the beginning of this blog is also the beginning of the fresh local eating season.....spring has exploded around us! My asparagus has been bitten back by frost a couple times this spring, but has produced enough to have several meals of it already. I've noticed that local Vermeulen Farms Asparagus is available in the grocery stores and looks gorgeous. There may be many fancy ways to prepare it, but the simplest and tastiest is the following:

Roasted Asparagus (maybe 4-6 servings, or enough for 2 Asparagus Lovers)

2 lb Asparagus
2 T. Olive Oil
1/2 t. Salt

Preheat your oven to 400. Wash the asparagus and break off the bottom of each stalk (usually it breaks at just the right point where the toughness ends). Spread it out on a cookie sheet and drizzle the olive oil over it. Use your hands to rub the oil evenly over, especially the tips. Sprinkle with salt and roast for about 20 minutes, until the largest stalks are just about tender and have started to brown. You be the judge, start checking after 10 minutes and decide how you like them. A healthy squeeze of lemon is nice if you have it!

We've also been enjoying greens from Taproot Farm in Port Williams both at home and at the Cafe. I've known Taproot's Patricia Bishop since high school and I love buying from her. If you haven't heard of her and husband Josh Oulton's Community Supported Agriculture Program (a subscription gets you a weekly year-round supply of local organically grown produce and other goodies), check out their link! Last night, one of our pasta specials featured their Arugula.

Arugula Pesto

1/2 lb. Arugula (Patricia's was beautiful, but my arugula always has flea beetle holes. This is a perfect use for imperfect arugula)
2 cloves Garlic
1/2 C. Almonds or Sunflower seeds (toast first for more flavour if you like)
1 C. Olive Oil
1/2 t. salt or to taste
1 C. grated parmesan cheese (We use Holmestead Parmesan, made in Factorydale near Berwick)

Pulse the arugula in a food processor with the garlic and nuts until the garlic is chopped. Leave processor on and add the oil in a slow stream. Sprinkle in the cheese and salt and pulse a few times until combined.

Toss with hot pasta and chicken or shrimp if you like, or combine with equal parts sour cream and mayo for a delish veggie dip or sandwich spread! Also great as a pizza sauce.