I’m not sure if I’ll ever really get used to the concept of eating moose.  But when in Newfoundland …

This is a roast from Fussellette’s dad, and I followed her instructions as to what to do for the basics of the whole thing.  The rest was sheer fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants moose stew madness.

So you plop the roast into your slow cooker.  Then you add your vegetables, like an onion, and/or some potatoes. I had some rather sad-looking broccoli and cauliflower in the fridge, so that went in with an onion. Then you add in a package of dried onion soup.  I’m not usually one to add pre-made mixes to things, but these were my instructions.

Then we need some fluid.  You could add in chicken broth.  Or beef broth.

But I had some mushroom broth in the fridge so I used that.

Which meant that I felt obligated to use some dried mushrooms as well.

I turned it to high and left it for a while.  Later on, I added some frozen green and yellow beans and some wild rice.

And near the end a sprinkle of Bell’s Seasoning. I know it’s for chicken and fish but it’s got my name on it and I couldn’t help myself.

Eventually the meat is done and you gotta pull it out and tear it off the bone before chucking it back in the stew. It won’t be difficult.

Your dog can help.

And there you have it — moose and mushroom stew. Served with toast.

I feel kind of bad.  Here I am, third-place winner for Best Blog About Crafting and I haven’t put up a crafting post in an age.  Sorry about that.  But rest assured I’m working hard on two major projects.  They’re just the sort of long-term ones that don’t make for exciting blogging.

Two people who are very dear to me are getting married this summer.  My eldest brother, Krystopf, ties the knot in early July, and my high school best friend, Doodle, gets hitched in mid-June.  I am making both of their wedding presents, and both of them are blankets.

Doodle and her soon-to-be husband, The Cyclist, live in Portland, Oregon, a place with weather very similar to what it is here in St. John’s.  By that I mean, windy and rainy.  So an ideal present would be one that encourages cuddling and coziness, right?  And we know from previous experience that felted wool is the coziest of them all.

When we were in Ottawa over Christmas, the Pie and I scoured the local second-hand stores to acquire as many genuine lambswool, merino, and cashmere sweaters as we could, in a specific range of colours.  Doodle and I agreed on red, white, blue, and black, as sort of a combination of Canadian and American colours (and black goes with everything).  I wanted to do something a bit different with this blanket, and have the colours sort of blend into each other, rather than have a pattern of alternating coloured squares.  So it’s going to be a bit trickier than normal.

Here you can see our initial haul (and Gren).  This is the colour scheme I am going with.  You can see that the main colours are represented at the corners, and then they blend through the other colours in the middle.  Like a square colour wheel.

Now, if you feel like undertaking a similar project, I just want to give you a heads-up first.  A lot of up-cycling and recycling projects are economical and a good way to save money.  This is not one of them.  A 100% wool or cashmere sweater, even second-hand, will run you between $9 and $14, depending on the quality and size, and for this project, we will be using approximately 25 sweaters.  So you can do the math there.

I felted all the sweaters while at my parents’ house (to take advantage of the fact that they were footing the power bill), and we mailed the sweaters back to ourselves in St. John’s.

Then I dismantled them.  I carefully cut out all the seams, so all the pieces of sweater lay flat.

I’m saving the seams.  I think they would make good toy stuffing material.

Here are all the sweaters, officially laid out in their colour wheel.

The sweater in the middle will serve as my keystone, if you will, and then I’ll use the rest of it to construct some baby toys for some wee ones I get to meet this summer.

Now I have to start cutting out the pieces.  I want to do it more as a puzzle or interlocking oblongs than as simple squares, so I’m going to have to work out some ratios so that all the pieces will fit together nicely.  I will keep you posted.

We had a Valentine’s cold-plate potluck at work on Tuesday and I was assigned to make a potato-egg salad.  And as the best one out there belongs to the Pioneer Woman, that’s the one I made, with some modifications of course.  Ever since the grocery store down the block closed I have found myself without certain key ingredients at unfortunate times.  Today, it was green onions.  So I improvised.

Wash and cube about 5lbs potatoes.  I used two different kinds, for the colour.  You can peel them if you want, but I like the texture and flavour of potato skins so I left them in.  Plop those in a large pot and boil them until they’re tender and mashable.

You’re also going to want to hard boil 4 eggs, through whatever method you use.  When they’re ready, peel them up.  Mine were pretty recalcitrant and refused to be peeled in a civilized manner.  The shells would not come off without a fight.

I punished them through the vigor of my chopping (even if your eggs are well-behaved, you’ll still want to chop them up).

Finely chop as well half an onion (or 5 green onions).

And a handful of sweet pickles.  You can use dills, if you prefer, but I think it’s better with the sweet ones.

In a bowl, mix together about 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise and 4 tablespoons mustard (I used a stone-ground dijon here, but you can use what you like).

In a wee bowl, arrange about 1/2 teaspoon paprika and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt.  I also added 2 tablespoons dried chives, for colour, as I was missing the green onions.

I also had another wee dish of dried dill, for garnish.

So here is my mis en place.

Mash your boiled potatoes.  I really like the colour combination of the white and yellow ones here.

Stir in your mayo/mustard mix.

Add in your eggs, onions, pickles, paprika, salt, and optional chives.  Make sure to scrape the bottom so you get everything mixed in evenly.

Plop it in a serving dish.  The best part about this potato salad is it’s good hot, warm, and cold.

Garnish with a sprinkle of paprika and some dill, or whatever floats your boat.  It’s not elegant, but it’s good!

Today is my little sister-in-law Mags’ birthday and I promised her a pasta dish.  Because I’m not around to make it for her in person, perhaps she can persuade Mrs. Nice to whip it up for a birthday treat.  Her brother certainly enjoyed it.  Happy birthday Mags!

The measurements for this are approximate, and I’m going to jump back and forth between metric and Imperial because I’m Canadian and I can.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Plop about 500g thawed frozen spinach in a bowl, together with 500g cottage cheese, 1/2 cup strong-flavoured cheese, grated (I used romano, but parmesan would also be good), and 2 teaspoons dried oregano.

Stir it silly and then season with pepper.

Take a jar of chunky tomato-based pasta sauce and spread 1/3 of it on the bottom of a 9″ x 13″ baking dish.

Now take a package of uncooked manicotti shells (usually there are 14 shells in a box) and stuff them with the cottage cheese/spinach mixture. Lay them on top of the sauce in the dish.

This was my first one, which I tried to stuff with a spoon.  I got a little too enthusiastic and it exploded everywhere.  After that I used my fingers. And I’m still trying to figure out how to get the spinach out of my kitchen stereo speakers.

And then when I got to the end of my pan I found I had run out of space, so that’s why they are all spastic here.  Plus I dropped in the leftover cottage cheese/spinach mix as well.  Aesthetics are not really my strong suit.

Mix 1/2 cup water with the remainder of your pasta sauce and pour it over the top of the uncooked stuffed noodles.

Bake, uncovered, for an hour, until it is bubbling all the way through.  Then sprinkle with 2 cups grated mozzarella and bake for an additional 15-20 minutes.

Let your lava-like pasta stand for a few minutes before serving.  Not the most attractive photo, but that didn’t stop the Pie from going back for seconds.

We don’t tend to celebrate Valentine’s Day.  We’re totally broke, for one thing, and for another, we’d rather not have to spend a day doing obligatory and clichéed things to tell each other how we feel.  We do that on a daily basis anyway.

I am of course talking about our love for Gren.  Duh.  He’s so smooshy.  In the words of Cait, “I want to smoosh him.  With smooshes.”  We definitely smoosh him regularly.

In any case, because it’s expected of us (and because nobody ever wants to do anything with us on Valentine’s Day), we usually have a nice meal together and talk about how stupid this Hallmark holiday is.

If you are of the same bent, or if you love to do smooshy romantic things for your true love, why not make up some fresh pasta and go from there?

I figured I would give ravioli a try.  Why the heck not?

The ingredients for each component of this are so simple. The only one I really measured for was the pasta dough, because I’m not yet at the eyeballing stage for that.

For the ravioli filling:

You will need sweet potatoes, dried shiitake mushrooms (you can use fresh ones but I like the chewy texture of the dried ones), and roasted garlic.

Plop a handful or two dried shiitake mushrooms in a bowl of warm water and leave them for 30-60 minutes, or until all tender.  I find that placing a small plate on top ensures they all get evenly exposed to water.

While those are percolating, peel and cube a large sweet potato.  This one weighed in at 1 3/4lb.  Plop that in a pot full of water and boil until tender.

Drain the sweet potatoes and mash ‘em.

Take your hydrated mushrooms out of the water, cut off the woody stems, and chop them finely.

I found that after chopping, a quick sojourn in the food processor got them to the size I wanted them.

Save the water from your mushrooms — it makes a great vegetable stock.

I made this roasted garlic last week from three heads of garlic.  If you click on the link above you can see how I did it.  I’m going to use all three heads, because the Pie and I have been together for almost eight years, so it’s not going to matter how much garlic we consume.  Do exercise some caution if you’re new to the relationship and you’re still trying to impress … Though I suppose if you both consume the same amount of garlic it really doesn’t matter, does it?

Anyway, I plopped that in the food processor as well (with a drop of olive oil) and came out with a lovely aromatic paste.

In a bowl, combine your mashed sweet potato, the minced mushrooms, and the garlic paste and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Stir that around and set it aside.

For the ravioli pasta:

For this you need durum semolina flour, salt, and eggs.  Semolina is perfect for making pasta because it has an extremely high gluten content, which means that your pasta will stay cohesive even when immersed in boiling water.  That is kind of important.

So take 3 eggs and whisk them together with a pinch of salt.  I like to add in a few drops of olive oil, as well, for smoothness.

Pour 2 cups durum semolina flour on a clean work surface, make a well in the centre, and pour in the eggs.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.  I wish I’d thought of it sooner so I could have made a better heart.

Using a scraper and/or a fork, gradually incorporate the eggs into the flour until you have a coherent ball.

I used some regular all-purpose flour at the end, just to reduce the tackiness of the dough a bit.  You will want to knead it for about 10 minutes, just to get all the gluten working for you.

Wrap up your final ball and let it rest for about 20 minutes.

Cut your dough into manageable sections.  I cut mine into four.  Flatten out your first section enough so it fits into your pasta machine.  If you are rolling it out by hand, have fun with that.

I prefer my pasta maker.

I cut my strips in half, so that I could fold the second half over the top half like a mirror image.  Though it does help if your top half is slightly bigger than your bottom half.

Put little dollops of your filling on your bottom sheet with enough space in between so you can cut them easily.

Carefully line up the top half and lay it over the filling.

Working from the inside out, gently stretch and press the top dough over the filling to form little pockets.

When each pocket is sealed, use a knife or a ravioli cutter to separate them.

For this first round, I went all the way up to the #7 setting on my pasta maker, which made the pasta sheets very thin — a little too thin.  You can see how they have torn and I had to patch them.

The next round, I only went up to the #5 setting, which was much more manageable, and I prepared the ravioli on waxed paper, which made peeling them up much easier. I probably could have gone as high as #6, but I’m still new to this.

I separated each round of pasta with waxed paper to prevent sticking.

I had some leftover filling, which I froze.  I would gladly make this again.

Now, set a pot of water to boil with a pinch of salt and a few drops of olive oil, and get started on your sauce.

For the sauce:

You will need butter, sage, lemon juice, and parmesan cheese.

Slice 10-12 sage leaves finely to ensure all their lovely aromatic juices get released.

To save time and my sanity (I really hate grating cheese), I cubed up about 1/3 cup of my extra-hard parmesan and gave it a go in the food processor.  Totally worth it.

So for your mis en place you have your sage, chopped, your cheese, grated, about 1/2 cup lemon juice, and about 4-5 tablespoons butter.

By now, your pasta water should be boiling, so carefully tip all your ravioli in and cook them for about 8 minutes.

While that is going on, in a large, wide, deep frying pan on medium-high heat, melt your butter.

Continue to cook the butter, scraping the bottom with a spatula to prevent burning, until it starts to foam up and the clear liquid turns a lovely light caramel brown colour.  Add in your sage leaves and remove the butter from the heat.

See the brownness?

Pour in your lemon juice and give that a stir. Oh man does that ever smell good. Like all the best parts of everything.

Drain your pasta and plop them in the frying pan with the butter.  Pour in your cheese and toss the lot to coat.

Serve it up, with plenty of leftovers.

Though  none for Gren.  Much to his disappointment.

I pulled this from the Get Cracking website and it just seemed so weird that I had to try it.  Plus I have a million wonton wrappers in my freezer that I bought in anticipation of making more gyoza (which of course I haven’t done).

First we’re going to roast a few vegetables.  Put your oven on the broil setting.  Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray and plop on your veggies.  I have here 2 red peppers and 3 Italian zucchini (or at least that’s what the sign at Costco called them).

Roast them until the peppers are all charred and black.

Let them cool for a bit, then peel the skins off the red peppers.

Then we’re going to boil ourselves some eggs.  In a medium saucepan, cover 6 eggs with water and bring it to a boil.

When it’s boiling, remove the pot from the heat, cover it with a lid, and leave that to stand for 20 minutes.  This is a different way to produce hard-boiled eggs than I’m used to, but I figure that the Egg Farmers of Canada know what they’re talking about.

Drain the eggs, run cold water over them to cool them off, then peel and slice them.

I liked how the cold water looked so much I took two more pictures of it.

While the eggs are doing their thing, finely chop 1 small onion and add it to another saucepan with a drop of olive oil and 2 cloves minced garlic (or 2 teaspoons minced garlic from a jar).  Sauté until everything is soft and squidgy.

Chuck in a package of baby spinach and stir that around until it’s all wilted.

Pour in a jar/can of pasta sauce and bring that puppy to a boil, then remove it from the heat.

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Get all your ingredients ready to go.

While you’re at it, chop up those roasted vegetables of your’n.

Find yourself an 8″ baking dish (or thereabouts) and ladle about a 1/2 cup of the sauce into the dish.  Line the bottom with some of your wonton wrappers, making sure to overlap them a little bit.

Spread that with some more of the sauce you have left, then some of your eggs.

Plop on a some of your chopped vegetables, then some grated mozzarella cheese (I’m not going to limit you on your cheese — we all have our preferences/weaknesses).

Do another layer of wontons, sauce, eggs, vegetables, and cheese.

When you are out of vegetables and eggs you should still have some sauce, cheese, and wontons left.

Any remaining wonton wrappers you’ve got, spread them over the top, then the rest of your sauce, and then some more cheese.  Bake in your 350°F oven for 30 minutes, until you can see the sauce at the centre of the dish bubbling up through the top.  Let it stand for a few minutes before you cut it, just so the rowdiness can calm down.  Serves SIX.

I may have told you this already, but a while back my parents took a road trip down to Louisiana with the specific goal of visiting the Avery Island Tabasco factory.  As a result all their family and friends received a plethora of Tabasco-related gifts.

One of these is this, a Tabasco ice cream mix.

I’ve had saffron ice cream.  Black bean ice cream.  Taro ice cream.  Hemp ice cream. Even wasabi ice cream.  So this can’t be too weird, right?  Granted, I didn’t really ENJOY any of those (well the saffron was pretty good), but I’m always willing to try something new.  The Pie, not so much.

It’s a mix, so I can’t really give you the recipe here (because I don’t know it), but it involves milk, cream, the mix, and Tabasco’s Sweet & Spicy Sauce (which we also received as a present).

So here goes.

The mix is revealed to be sugar, vanilla, and xanthan gum.  So nothing too scary.  Sweetener, flavour, and thickener.  Fine.

Put that in a bowl, add the cream.  Whisk.

Add in the sweet and spicy sauce.  Whisk.

In the ice cream maker, it reveals itself to be a lovely pale peach colour.

And it actually froze up pretty quickly. You are supposed to put it back in the container in which the mix came, but ours didn’t fit.

The verdict?  The Pie, Fussellette, and I all tried it, and as Fussellette says, “It tastes like stir-fry.”  So if you like that, I recommend this stuff.  If you’d prefer your ice cream to be a little more traditional, you might want to leave this on the shelf.  I wonder if there’s anyway this could be saved.  Any suggestions?

…

Oh.  Hello.  Can I help you?

You want to learn to MAKE this stuff?  And you want me to teach you?

Sorry.  Can’t.  I’m too busy cramming it in my face.

Come back later.

…

Okay fine.

I’ve wanted to teach myself to make fudge for an age and a half. Fudge is one of my favourite things, especially the simple traditional ones.  Butter and Maple fudge?  I could eat those forever.  And whenever I can get my hands on them and the Pie is out for the evening, I frequently do.  I pay for it, oh yes, I pay for it.  But it’s totally worth it.

This year my New Year’s Resolution was to learn to make fudge.  That and eat more vegetables.  I never thought vegetables would be a problem for me.  But of course that was before I moved to Newfoundland.  Anyway.  Fudge.  Resolution for fudge.

So last week I decided that enough was enough.  It was time.  Plus I keep trying to think of luscious dessert-y-type objects that also happen to be gluten-free so that I can bribe Fussellette to drive me places.  I figure it’s a win-win situation for all concerned.

In searching for crumbly oh-so-melt-in-your-mouth fudge recipes on the internet, I came to the realization that the stuff I am thinking of is also known simply as TABLET, a traditional Scottish bon-bon.  I wish I had known this sooner.  Finding a good recipe would have been quicker, and every time I passed a package of tablet in the specialty store I would have purchased it.  So perhaps it’s a good thing I didn’t find this out sooner.

Enough with my blathering.  I found this recipe by Stewart C. Russell and it seems to be the best, mostly for the clear instructions.  And if I’m going to experiment and things are going to go horribly, spectacularly wrong, I want it to count.  So I doubled the recipe and modified things a bit.  I’ll give you my version here, and if you don’t like the craziness of it you can go back to Stewart and do his recipe the right way.

You will only need four ingredients for this, but you need a lot of most of them:

1 cup cold milk (this is for dampening down your sugar.  The measurement is approximate.)

200g butter (I used salted instead of unsalted, because I like my fudge a little less than sickly sweet.  This measurement is slightly less than the 1lb [454g] block you get in the stores.)

3, 300g tins sweetened condensed milk (Stewart’s recipe calls for a 400g tin, which doesn’t seem to exist around these parts, so this is the reason I doubled the recipe.  In the end I had 100g more milk than the math called for but I don’t think it did any harm.)

2kg brown sugar (you can use white here for a lighter fudge, but this is what I had around)

First thing: generously butter two rimmed baking sheets.  I mean GENEROUSLY.  And you will need these ready to go before you do anything else, because when you need them you will have no time to spare.  Put them somewhere handy, on a heatproof surface.

Take out your largest saucepan (this stuff foams up quite a bit). And a big wooden spoon (you always make candy with wooden spoons).   I also recommend using a candy thermometer.  We’re going to do some other tests here but if you want surefire accuracy I would use one as well as a fail-safe.

Plop the sugar in that there saucepan and pour on the milk.  Give that a wee stir.

Add in your butter and your condensed milk.  Take a dobble of that and put it on a plate.  Admire the grainy texture and pale colour.  You are going to have quite the colour chart on this plate by the end.

Heat the stuff in the saucepan on medium-high, stirring, until the butter is melted and everything is starting to get smooth.

Bring the mixture to a boil.

Turn it down to a simmer (this will depend on the thickness of your pot, the amount you have in it, and the temperature of your element). You’re going to simmer it for a while, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking. It’s gonna get foamy and scary.

You’re waiting for the “soft ball” stage in candy making, which is when your thermometer hits 240°F.  If you’re simmering and you can’t get the sugar to increase in temperature, try turning up the heat a little bit at a time until you see a difference.  Just make sure not to burn it!

While you’re waiting, keep testing out your liquid on your plate.  Dobble some on and let it cool.  Watch it darken in colour and smooth out in consistency.  On this one the latest dobble, the one at the far right, is exhibiting some caramel tendencies, as it’s starting to stretch out when I pull it.  That means we’re almost there.

Another way to test is to take a teaspoon-full of your sugar mix and plunge it into a small amount of cold water for a second or two.  Then tip the spoon and watch the sugar pour off the spoon.  Here it’s coming off in a smooth string, so it’s not ready.

Still too stringy here.

Ah.  Here we have a SOFT BALL coming off the spoon.  It’s ready.

Remove the pan from the heat and start stirring it vigorously with your wooden spoon.  Not so vigorously that you splash yourself with molten sugar, but put some energy into it.

Pause occasionally to scrape the crystallized sugar off the sides of the pot.  These crystals will help to seed other crystals in the mix, which is what we want.

When you start to feel the grate of crystals on the bottom (when scraping your spoon down there feels a little gritty), then your fudge is starting to set.

Quickly pour the contents of the saucepan onto the baking sheets. Use a spatula to get it all.

You can see how it started to set as I was pouring because I took too long.  As a result, I have fudge with lumps.

Leave the stuff to set overnight, if you can stand it, or at least until they’ve cooled completely.  Those light blotches you see are just crystallizing sugar, which is a good thing.

Look how nicely it just pops out of the pan!

Use a long flat knife to cut or break your set fudge into pieces. When you are cutting it, press down on the whole length of the blade at once.  If you go in at an angle the fudge will crack along a different line.

Of course, then you get reject pieces, which is what I’ve been eating.

I recommend cutting your fudge into smallish pieces.  Otherwise you might eat too much.  Oh who are we kidding?  You (or someone you know and love) are (is) going to eat too much anyway.

Store in an airtight container.  Or mail pieces to all your friends.

I think I’d like to try this again with granulated sugar, as opposed to brown.  I think the molasses in the brown sugar, together with the extended simmering time I had to get the sugar up to the right temperature, made for a firmer fudge than the super crumbly stuff I really love.

CLEANING TIP: If you fill your empty saucepan with hot water right away and leave it for a bit, then cleanup will be a breeze.

So The Pie put his foot down and demanded some reorganization.  But with school and work and some ridiculous snowstorms, we had to do it piecemeal.  As a result, all available surfaces in my kitchen, including the floor, looked like this for a while:

At one point there was absolutely no counter space at all and so when the Pie did the dishes he had to put the drying rack on the floor, near Gren’s food and water.  Gren was seriously not amused with the disruption.

Now, however, my pantry looks like this:

Finally I can put all my spices on the same shelf, which appeals to the OCD in me.

Who’s to say how long this state of apparent tidiness will last?  Not me.

Anyway, I have a tip for you today, and it comes from pop singer/actress Christina Aguilera.  Actually, I don’t really know if it comes from her or not, but I saw her do it in Burlesque and I thought it was a neat trick.

I don’t know why this is, but sometimes I have trouble opening the lids of household aerosols (actually, the only household aerosol I have is cooking spray, but I’m sure this works with other things).  They’re not like spray paint, which has places you press to get them open.  So sometimes I struggle.

The trick, according to Ms. Aguilera, who did it with a can of hairspray, is to smartly rap the  bottom of the can on the counter top.  Then the lid will open easy peasy.  And strangely enough, it works!

This was dessert when Fussellette came to dinner last week.

Started first with a meringue (my recipe is from The Joy of Cooking, but you can see a chocolate version here).

We plopped on the meringue some raspberry ice cream (see post here, but minus the vinegar).  Then we topped it with whipped cream, melted chocolate, and fresh blackberries.  Sweet and simple.