her real world

Okay, so.

Yeah, I know.

It’s been a long time folks. Let’s just say I’ve been busy. Crazy in love and super happy and loving my job and losing weight and energized and…happy. You can see from above that I am certainly wearing purple and smiling a lot and enjoying the big fish tank at the Toronto Zoo.

I think about blogging every day. My “inspirations” folders (both digital and paper) are filled to the brim with things I want to do and things I want to tell you about. The “photos I haven’t uploaded to Flickr” queue is growing by the second and the “photos I have uploaded to Flickr but haven’t titled, geotagged or made public” queue sits there taunting me every time I look at my laptop. I’m telling myself to be patient and I hope you can be patient along with me.

This week marks one year on this domain and I’m happy as a pig in poop about that. I’ve finally found an internet place where I like to roost, and it has been a long time coming. My first blog post was on livejournal in 2003 and that was the beginning of a long journey of flitting and fluttering about trying to find my way.

Things you can start getting excited about:

• The launch of my new ‘corporate look’, I’m working with a faboo designer (@kevgel)
• A thousand bajillion photos of delicious food that I can’t wait to share
• The story of a journey I’m about to take, working title “Why I’m putting a king sized bed in a bachelor apartment”
• My very nascent thoughts on the social web and how I’m bringing it to work. Yes, you did hear me just say one of the things I don’t talk about on my blog. But we’re going to be refining the rules!
• A new idea I have for sharing photos, not sure if it’s going to work
• Me showing you how artsy and crafty I have been in the last few months
• Many, many photos and stories about Toronto
• A few ploys on getting a bit more interactivity on this here blog

Have I wet your whistle?

Until then, follow me @herrealworld

This photo doesn’t really inspire the kind of picnic I’m thinking of right now, but it’s a picnic table and I work with what photos I have. But this is the picnic table where my family and I have shared countless meals. Everything tastes better outside!

I’m going to confess: I’m a picnicaholic. There is something about eating alfresco that makes me quite gleeful. One of my all time favourite shows on the Food Network is Oliver’s Twist, and my favourite episode is where Jamie prepares a picnic in a tiffin tin. I have yet to find a tiffin tin that I like (when I went to Crate & Barrel there was a yellow one that I wasn’t very fond of), but I may have to turn up the heat on my search. Because picnic recipes are out in full force.

Because I’m not able to make a picnic *right this very moment*, I thought I’d share some of the lovely and inspiring recipes that I’ve found recently.

To me, a picnic has to be portable and not messy. Sandwiches, salads and cookies are pretty standard fare for me, unless I have access to a grill. But today I’m thinking about a secluded picnic on a rock near a lake, so nothing too messy or fancy. I also adore fresh herbs and the fact that I finally have all my little seeds in the ground makes me quiet joyous.

So here is a list of things I’d take with me on a picnic tomorrow, hopefully you find some inspiration to have a picnic of your own!

Drinks: A bottle of sparkling water with mint or lemon and lime or perhaps a bottle of nice wine. Or both!

Sandwiches: ahi tuna wraps with avocado, dijon-cilantro tuna salad sandwiches, any sandwich with green chili mayonnaise, bacon egg salad sandwiches with fresh basil

Salad: sour cream cucumber salad with mustard seeds, French potato salad, potato salad with radishes, cucumber and dill,

Dessert: coconut macaroons, lime meltaway cookies, white chocolate strawberry oatmeal cookies 

So who wants to come on a picnic?!

I’ve always eaten meat. I was raised on a cattle farm, I grew up eating ‘organic’ (we didn’t call it that, but it was home grown, free range, hormone free and all that good stuff) beef, poultry and lamb. The only thing I’m pretty sure we ate that was from a store was pork. I also ate various game meats, venison most often and sometimes duck or goose.

Animals were a part of our life.  In addition to having crop land, we raised cattle, sheep and chickens. I helped do chores, shovelled poop and picked eggs. We were a small farm who cared more about farming than making money and in the early 90s we were told that we were not profitable enough. We still ate local meat, but we more often got it from other farmers rather than raising it ourselves.

And then I moved away to go to university. And being a poor student I ate what I could afford, which generally was rubbery bonless chicken thighs that I’d bought as a family pack on sale and then frozen and then thawed and made into a stir fry or something. These were times where I dreamed of the meat I grew up with, meat that tasted and felt like meat in my mouth. I dreamed of going to a grocery store and being able to buy ‘the good stuff’.

Eventually I became done with university. But it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to say that I’m ‘done’ with eating like a student. I still enjoy shawarma and the odd hot dog. And even make myself a MSG free version of ramen noodles.

What I have been doing is eating organic meat. As well as I can afford (as I’m not a bajillionaire by any stretch of the imagination), I’ve slowly replaced all of the ‘other’ meat in my diet with food that is well to me just more real. This means that the amount of meat that I’m eating has decreased, but the quality has increased substantially.

This makes me a flexitarian. There have been many reasons to do this, some of them political, some of them moral, some of them for my health. I’m sure I’ll tell you all about it in the series of posts that I have planned.

It’s been somewhat easy so far. Most of the time I’m able to choose a veggie option (the vegetarian platter at my favourite shawarma place is actually really fantastic) and when I’m not I’ve been choosing a sustainable type of fish. Or if I’m lucky enough to go to a place that serves organic meat, I will eat that.

But barbecue season is coming and bacon (and his big brother prosciutto) is always around. Which means that temptation lurks in the likliest of places.

But I’m going to keep trying this eating less meat thing.  And I’m going to drag you all along kicking and screaming.

…At least for today.

I woke up in my usual post-”Springing Forward” glory, late and grumpy. I went to bed last night and laid awake, lamenting my situation.

It was drizzling when I got outside, but warm. With a coffee in hand from my favourite coffee shop, things were looking up. It was windy when I went out for fresh air during my work day, but I could tell that the wind was taking away the snow. Right now ti’s windy, but the blue sky teases me between the clouds of what I hope is all the snow in the city evaporating away.

As a true farm girl, my life revolves around the weather. In the winter I’m depressed. Spring gives me hope. Spring brings muddy-puddle-jumping and spring thawing with its mighty aroma where rain and dirt and things growing and things melting all mix together.  Honestly? I’d rather have a thaw on the farm, because at least I know what cow shit smells like. Here in the city? I have no idea what is wafting from the mounds of melting snow and refuse.

Today was very spring-like. And I have to give credit where credit is due, I hadn’t noticed how much brighter it was when I arrived home from work until a friend pointed it out.

Today feels like spring. And the wind? Means I have no snow on my balcony anymore. Holy effing crap.

I may or may not have had a bit of a spring in my step when I walked home. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone.

While editing photos I made a delicious soup. I don’t really know if this is how it is supposed to taste, because my experience with African food is very limited. But it’s delicious and I followed the recipe. It has a number of flavours I’ve worked with before (coconut, ginger, cilantro) and one that I’d never ever even thought about putting in chicken soup: green banana.

West African Chicken Soup
Serves about four, depending on how hungry those four people are

3 cups chicken stock
1 cup chopped chicken (I used leftover roasted leg meat)
2 tablespoons minced ginger
2 tomatoes, seeded and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons Madras curry powder
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup coconut milk
1 green banana, peeled and cut into 3/4-inch pieces
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

1. While stirring, add the ginger, tomatoes, curry powder and tomato paste to the stock and cook over moderate heat until everything is softened.
2. Stir in coconut milk and banana and bring to a boil.
3. Season with salt cook over moderate heat until the banana is very tender.
4. Add the chopped chicken and cilantro and simmer until just heated through.
5. Ladle into bowls and serve with white rice.

I didn’t serve with rice as I was lazy and had lovely multigrain toast instead. But it was super delicious and I have plenty for tomorrow and to freeze. I’m not sure if it’s going to freeze well, but I won’t find out till I try.

And since I mentioned the photo editing, here is a sample. I’m still not 100% impressed with how the photos are turning out, but I’m making progress. At some point in the future I’ll explain the steps I’ve taken to get to the below photo, but I’m still tweaking things and will do that when I’m happy with how they are turning out. Right now the biggest problem is that I think my lens is too slow and my camera doesn’t have an in between an ISO of 800 and 1600, which means that the photos are grainy. But I’m picky…and the team seems to enjoy them!

I generally like it savoury and including eggs, but to balance things out this weekend I did it savoury and sweet. Yesterday I made simple fried eggs with toast. A good friend of mine has convinced me that the only way to fry eggs is in olive oil, and so I did. And to be truthful, it really does make them a whole lot better. A little salt and pepper on top and a few slices of multigrain bread from Bread & Son’s with a coffee, and it was the perfect Saturday morning brunch.

If you’re wondering where the fruits and veggies are, you’ll have to wait for my upcoming post on organic blood oranges. They tasted lovely and sweet and sour and they made a lovely photo project.

Today I decided I would go with crepes. I’ve been making crepes since I was a wee girl as my mom received a crepe pan for her wedding shower and I was enthralled by it when I found it on the lazy susan. I made crepes over and over again, so I’d like to think I’m fairly good at it.

I had some Anjou pears kicking around. I’ve decided full-heartedly that I’m a Bartlett girl, as the Anjou texture is a bit too firm or too something. So I decided to cook with the pears, and Crepes with pear and lime was born.

You’ll have to forgive the photo for being a bit bland, had I felt the need to delay the eating and be rewarded with cold crepes I would have made some lime curls to add a bit of colour to the plate. I admit the picture doesn’t capture the flavour very well, but please rest assured these were very delicious. I halved the following recipe as I am but one woman.

Crepes with pear and lime
Makes 8 large or 16 mini crepes

Crepes:

2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1 cup flour
2 tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp salt

1. Whisk eggs, milk and water together. Add flour, whisk until lumps are gone. Add melted butter and salt. Batter should be very runny.
2. Heat a non-stick pan over medium heat.
3. Pour batter into pan in manageable amounts, cook until top turns opaque.
4. Flip crepe, cook another few seconds.
5. Remove from pan and cover. Crepes will stay warm while you finish the rest if you work quickly.

Pear and lime sauce:

4 firm pears, peeled and sliced
2 tbsp butter
4 tbsp brown sugar
2 limes, juice of

1. When finished cooking crepes, add butter to pan.
2. Add pears to pan and coat with butter, let cook for a few seconds.
3. Add brown sugar and let the pears get brown and caramelly.
4. Remove pears from pan, stuff into crepes.
5. Pour lime juice into pan and stir into sugar that is left there.
6. Pour lime and brown sugar syrup over crepes.
7. Enjoy!

I don’t know how explicitly I’ve said this before, but there are two things I don’t talk about on my blog.

The first is work. You may know that I do policy work for the Government of Canada. If you are resourceful, you can find out more details. If you are not, then just know that I do policy work for the Government of Canada. I don’t talk about it. The end.

The second is my personal life. This would be more difficult if I actually had one at the moment, but I can assure you that if I did I’d most likely cheer about the fact that (cover your ears mother) I was getting to have relations on a regular basis and that’s about it. Chances are I’d blog even less than I already do if this were the case.  Really if you could choose to blog OR have relations and the choice would be to blog, I’m sorry we can no longer be friends.

This doesn’t mean I can’t talk about the effects of either of these on my life. For instance, because of #1 I don’t even have time to shower regularily (kind of kidding) let alone make daily photo posts or even schedule daily photo posts so it at least looks like I have time to blog every day. Not having a #2 makes me cranky as the replacement for not having #2 is chocolate and booze, and really that makes me fat. I digress.

The one downside to having my shit figured out is the fact that I’ve come to the realization that there is so much stuff that I want to do I can’t even get it all organized. My iPhone is helping, but I’m finding there are not enough hours in the day to even daydream about the stuff I want to do, let alone actually doing it. I’m thinking it’s about time that I polish off my old personal logic model and try and map some stuff out, but between planning my personal finances and my retirement plans and my crafting projects and my home decoration fantasies and my cooking adventures and my photography projects and the progress on my morph and the countless other things I can’t remember to list off right now I’m pretty exhausted. My house needs vacuuming and my floors need washing and I have new picture frames from IKEA that I need to get filled and I have baking that I want to do and swimming that I can’t do because of the goddamn bus strike and mother nature are conspiring against my efforts to make it to and from the pool and not turn into a Melsicle.  This paragraph is getting too long.

New paragraph. My cats come to me immediatly if I open any sort of a bag that sounds like a bag of cat treats. For instance you know those dark chocolate covered almonds I love? Yeah, you can get organic ones from Shoppers. I opened that bag maybe once this evening and every time…err…I mean that one time, the cats came running like raging fangirls. I certainly only opened the bag once.

New paragraph.

At the moment I have at the very least three crafting projects in progress. That doesn’t count the million that I have in my head. I’m trying to take photos every day, but I want to take more than that so it’s hard to live up to the unrealistic expectation that I can actually do that. And I want to start drawing at least one webcomic. That’s doable right?

On the morph front, I’m not gaining (in fact I lost over Christmas), but I’m not losing very fast either. It would help if I could get to the pool, because that’s the exercise that I really like to do. I miss the pool. I plan on getting a car. I also need to get out and be more social because I’m two for two the last two times I went out. Grocery store + cute boy = flirting and almost enough courage to ask him for his number. IKEA + cute artist boy = courage enough to ask him for his business card. He didn’t have any printed yet, but he told me about his show. Sadly I did not press further. Happily having my shit together means that this isn’t the end of the world.

Have I updated you enough yet?

I’ve got plans for the blog, but not the time to realize them. Stay tuned for a ramped up design, a section devoted to photography, an attempt to make this place more interactive, and more content. But while I have a huge deadline looming for the thing I don’t talk about #1, don’t expect any of it anytime soon. But know that I love you. All of you. And by you I mean the millions of adoring readers.