Greg and Kat's blog

The trifle that I regularly make is always a big hit. This is particularly joyous because it’s not very hard to make. The recipe is from the (annoyingly, out-of-print) New Canadian Basics cookbook, with a few mods by me. If you find a copy of Basics, buy it and live by it.

We served it at our open house and I posted a vague recipe then. Daniela wanted me to be more explicit, so…

Trifle

This makes a big party-sized bowl.

• 2 pound cakes (or similar cakes from grocery store) cut into 1″ cubes
• 1 C fruit coulis (recipe below)
• 6 C fruit pieces (berries, peaches, mango,… whatever is available. Use canned/frozen if you must.)
• 6 C custard sauce (recipe below)
• 2 C whipping cream

1. Make the other recipes below. They need to cool, so leave some time. (I usually do them the day before.) Eat a few handfuls of the cake pieces while you’re getting stuff together.
2. For the first layers, use about a third of each: cake pieces, fruit coulis, fruit pieces, custard.
3. For the next layers, repeat step 1 twice more, using the rest of each ingredient. Cover and refrigerate for 4–8 hours.
4. Whip cream and spread on top. Garnish with some berries.

Fruit Coulis

This makes more than the trifle needs, but there’s nothing wrong with having some berry sauce in the fridge. Reasonable substitution: decent berry jam thinned with a little fruit juice or sherry.

• 1 kg bag of frozen fruit (mixed fruit or mixed berries)
• water
• sugar
• cornstarch
• 1/4 C sherry (optional)

1. Put 1/4 C of water and 1 tbsp of cornstarch in a jar/tupperware. Shake to combine. (Goal: no cornstarch lumps.)
2. Combine 1/4 C water, 1/4 C sugar, and the berries in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally.
3. When the berries have started to cook, add half of the cornstarch mixture and stir. Make sure the mixture boils to cook the cornstarch.
4. Look and taste. Add more cornstarch mixture if it needs to be thicker; sugar to taste; cook longer if there are too many berry chunks.
5. Turn off heat and stir in sherry.

Custard Sauce

Makes about 6 cups. You could probably substitute 6 cups of custard made with a custard powder, but I have never tried.

• 3/4 C sugar
• 6 tbsp (=3/8 C) cornstarch
• 4 1/2 C milk
• 6 eggs
• 1 tbsp vanilla

1. In a big microwavable bowl, combine the sugar, cornstarch, and milk. Whisk to combine.
2. Microwave on high for 3 minutes. Whisk to combine and break up any lumps. Repeat until it thickens. (It will boil a bit: covering the bowl saves cleanup.)
3. In a smaller bowl, beat the eggs. Whisk in a little of the hot mixture. (You’re preventing egg lumps here: add hot mixture to eggs slowly while whisking, until you have added about as much mixture as you had eggs originally.)
4. Microwave for a few more minutes. Stop and whisk every minute or so. Continue until the whole thing has cooked (thickened and maybe boiled a bit).
5. Add the vanilla.

We’re back from Vegas. Many pictures were taken. A small amount of money was lost, more was spent. Some highlights from me:

• We had a meal, and took many pictures at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon. My favourite courses were probably the lobster carpaccio and the sea bass.

• Now that I think about it, I might have been up slightly. I have photographic evidence of being up a total of $85. I only lost money when I sat at a slot machine a couple of times. The dollar slot that Kat told be was good was the worst of it. I reckon I’m up $20–40.

• At one point, Kat wanted to play a dollar slot for a while. I said I was going to see if there was a quarter slot or something nearby. I circled a couple banks of slot machines and came back. Kat was done, having lost $40 in like two minutes. Stay away from the slot machines, kids.

• My best gambling experience was when we found a roulette table with a $5 limit (as opposed to $10) at the MGM. I sat down and started playing pretty randomly. Every bet on the roulette table has a house edge of 2/37, so it’s not like my decisions meant much anyway.

  The dealer was nice and very helpful (since all of us cheapskates at the $5 table were amateurs). I got a free drink while sitting there, and happened to come away $43 up (actually $48, but I left $5 with the dealer). That was pretty much everything I wanted from the casino.

• The best picture I got in the casino was right before a pit boss walked up to me and told me that “for future reference, pictures are allowed anywhere else on the property, but not in the casino.” Polite but firm. Very good.

  There are probably 27 ways to cheat at the tables using a digital camera, none of which I would be able to figure out.

• The Neon Museum/Boneyard was really good, and a great opportunity for pictures. Definitely recommended for anybody going to Vegas.

• My 30mm f/1.4 lens did come through very well for some night shots on the strip.

Even those familiar with the food court in Metrotown might have missed a place called “Cultures”. In fact, the best description I can find of it online is a page offering a franchise.

The place basically does sandwiches and salads (in the potato salad, coleslaw, pasta salad vein). There are some other wraps and lasagna and stuff that I haven’t tried. I have been going there for a while out of fast food fatigue: it’s all tasty and different than the usual mall faire. They have a sandwich and two salads combo: I usually get a tuna sandwich, potato salad, and some pasta salad. It’s like having a little personal picnic in the middle of the mall.

But, I’m not blogging to praise their food: it’s good, but not worth blogging about.

The place is run by a Chinese family (or they seem like they might be a family). As far as I can tell, between the group of them, they speak the following English: “sandwich”, “tuna”, “white bread”, “brown bread”, “toasted”, “mustard”, “mayonnaise”, “drink”, and the various numeric/money/change-making vocabulary. Even at that, about half the time, somebody other than the first person that addresses me has to be summoned to deal with complicated things like “tuna”.

I’m also not blogging to point out that there are some people in Vancouver who don’t speak much English. Nobody who has adopted the city as their home would be bothered by that.

I’m blogging to point out that there is pretty much no such thing as Chinese people (who are from China, with Chinese tastes in food) who like potato salad and pasta salad and beet salad and whatever other salad they serve. That means that every morning, these people wake up, follow some recipe that they got with the franchise, and think “I can’t believe white people eat this. It would be so much better with MSG and some kind of dried fish flakes or something.”

I’m blogging to praise their entrepreneurial spirit. Anybody can sell a product they like. It takes some real stones to sell a product that you probably are at best indifferent towards. I couldn’t do it.

So, go to Cultures when you’re at Metrotown. Get a sandwich and marvel at their courage.

It has been a trying day so far:

1. I got up and went for a bike ride. It was raining, so I didn’t do the full Burnaby Mountain circuit, but got a good ride in: starting my day a little worn, but feeling good.
2. As I finished the ride, I came into our underground parking lot, turned the corner on smooth, wet, slightly oily pavement and felt my wheels slide out. The bike hit the ground hard enough to break a pedal. I came to a stop arms out and skidding on my stomach/chest, superhero-style (except not flying). If it hadn’t been for the cold weather layers, it would have scraped my left nipple off, which would have sucked. No blood loss or serious injury, but now I’m sore and tense.
3. After a shower, Kat and I went to the Golden Pita for lunch. Ran into Art and Janice, which was nice.
4. Then we had to do some shopping (for dinner tonight and our planned holiday open house). This involved some obscure ingredients, so many stops were required. The first stop was the dreaded Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon with every cheap person in Burquitlam.
5. Then to Superstore on a Saturday afternoon with every cheap grocery shopper in Burnaby.
6. Then Famous Foods, which rocks and actually had the obscure ingredients we wanted, so that was good. If you need obscure spices or baking ingredients in Vancouver, this is the place to go. Would buy from again, A+++++.
7. Then to T&T. We wanted a lobster (for a seafood boil tonight), which involved waiting for the old Chinese ladies whose lobster-picking algorithm seemed to be (1) pick up a lobster and flip it over, (2) look at its underside for 30 seconds, (3) put it down and talk to each other for 30 seconds, (4) repeat. I managed to not tap any of them on the shoulder and say “if you pick up another lobster, I will cut you”, so it worked out as well as could be expected.
8. Home.

Overall, a generally unpleasant day, with parts 2, 4, 5, and 7 really sucking. Perhaps a decent dinner will raise my spirits.

Costco has always been my connection for garden burgers. They sold sleeves of about 25 of them, and there was always one in my freezer. There have been many times they kept me alive, particularly in the two lost years while Kat was in NC.

In my last three visits to three different Costcos, they haven’t had any. From this, I conclude that Costco has stopped selling garden burgers.

This is not acceptable, and could be a dealbreaker on my (already facultative) vegetarianism. Does anybody know where I can get a big box o’ veggie burgers, thus avoiding colon cancer and morbid obesity?

My life is in your hands. Please help.

I never had much of a taste for “salads” when I was growing up. The whole macaroni salad, potato salad, coleslaw thing usually seemed like a bunch of food I didn’t really like, slathered in mayonnaise. But I did like potatoes and they were everywhere: it was the starch staple in my family, and it’s still inconceivable that my mother would make an evening meal without potatoes.

At some point last year, I decided that I might actually like potato salad. I don’t really know why, but I formed an idea in my head of what potato salad should taste like. I just had to find it, but after a long search, I came up empty. Still mostly too much mayonnaise, too creamy, more relish than potato flavour, not enough mustard bite.

So, I set about creating the potato salad I wanted. No nasty relish, a mustard taste that isn’t shy, and it should all still taste like potatoes at the end:

• 2 lb red potatoes
• 1/3 cup mayonnaise
• 3 4 tbsp grainy mustard
• 3 tbsp chopped parsely
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped fine
• 1 stick celery, chopped fine
• chipotle Tabasco
• salt and pepper

1. Boil the potatoes (skin-on) until they are cooked. Don’t overcook, or they will fall apart.
2. Let the potatoes cool and chop them into half inch cubes, removing whatever skin comes off easily.
3. Combine all of the ingredients and stir. Add Tabasco and salt and pepper to taste.

If this is made a day ahead, the mustard flavour fades, and I find myself adding more. I suspect the acid in the mustard neutralizes, but I’m just making that up.

Now that I’m in Chapel Hill for 10 days, I have to figure out what I want to do: this will probably be my last long visit. My plans seems to be focusing around food. Here are the places I need to visit:

Allen and Son BBQ: The best local BBQ place. Actually went for dinner tonight. As you can tell, I’m off the vegetarian wagon in NC.

Goodberry’s Frozen Custard: We stumbled across frozen custard when on a quest to buy some damn thing or another last year. It doesn’t seem possible to get it in Vancouver, so I’m going to have to get it now.

Toledo’s Taqueria: This is a little hole-in-the-wall cafeteria-style Mexican place. Day labourers wait outside in the mornings, so I’m guessing it’s pretty authentic. Plus, nobody speaks English. Kat insists on exercising her high school Spanish. I’m happy to get out “plato especial”.

Some less authentic Mexican place: I’m not against a little tex in my mex either.

Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen: It’s just not possible to get biscuits this good in Vancouver. Something about the amount of protein in Canadian flour.

Bon’s: We haven’t been there before, but I need some southern food.

S & T Soda Shoppe: A real, restored olde-timey soda shoppe nearby.

Subject: Re: Project Don’t Die Before I Reach The Age Of 28

As one of the facultative vegetarians that you were probably referring to, I feel like I should respond.

My first thought to the taste-of-vegetables problem is fairly straightforward, I think. If you like the taste of meat, do the same thing you would when trying to give a dog a pill: mix it with meat. The obvious device for this is probably the stir fry.

Also, consider the wonders of cheese. Nothing makes broccoli palatable like a cheese sauce. Might I also dare to suggest you have a look at a cookbook or two? They’re like algorithms textbooks, but for food.

One of the things that really pisses me off are people I refer to as “penance vegetarians”. These are the people that seem to treat vegetarianism like it’s punishment for something and have been doing it for far too long. They are the ones that like tofu and snack from little bags of what appears to be bird food. They rave about the food at the Nam.

Vegetarian food can have fat in it. It can even have flavour if you play your cards right.

On the subject of gastrointestinal stress: I’m sure you’ll be fine. The system seems to get used to whatever one has been giving it. For example, I don’t think Mexican people are in a constant state of distress, but Mexican food it’s always an easy way to a punchline for American sitcom characters. Stay the course, and you’ll be fine.

Before I get to the point, I want to explain my last two weeks, with pictures where I have them:

• Dec 19: Kat gets to YVR at 21:00 after my marathon FAS UCC meeting in the afternoon.
• Dec 20: A few last things at work for me; Kat works on her talk.
• Dec 21: Kat’s Ama’s Birthday. For her grandmother’s birthday, the grandkids prepared the meal (for the second year). Kat and I did a lot of the heavy lifting, preparing butternut squash soup, green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, ham, pasta, and probably some other stuff I forgot. [10:00–21:00]
• Dec 22: Kat and Tina get their hair cut at Neil’s, followed by dinner. [16:00–21:00]
• Dec 23: Lunch with Kelly and Paul, then I gave blood.
• Dec 24: Xmas Eve lunch at Ama’s. They used to have dinner on Xmas eve, but decided that was too late this year. So, it became lunch, then dinner (and Wii) with Pam and her parents. We brought potato salad (mmmm… potato salad). [10:00–1:00]
• Dec 25: Presents, then the rest of the day at Kelly and Paul’s. A whole day and my pants didn’t even really hurt at the end. [14:00–2:00]
• Dec 26: No boxing day shopping, but dinner at Tony’s. [17:00–19:00]
• Dec 27: Dim Sum and Hockey with Oli, Tina, Jon, and Eunice. The guys that are paid to live in the same city as me scored more goals than some guys paid to live in some other city. That makes me feel pride, apparently. [11:00–22:00]
• Dec 28: Beer & Bacon fest 2. The second Beer & Bacon featured a Wii and three pounds of bacon. [18:00–2:00]
• Dec 29: Dinner with Suyoko and Sameer (the boyfriend that I had never met). [18:00–21:00]
• Dec 30: Bubble tea with Angelica, Jen, and Eugene. [14:00–16:00]
• Dec 31: New Year’s Eve at our place. I also spent an hour or so at Daniela’s. [19:00–1:00]
• Jan 1: Lunch at Ama’s. As always, lunch is a long thing. [11:00–16:00]
• Jan 2: Kat leaves for YVR at 4:15. Back to work and coffee with Amanda at 11:00. After being at work for three hours, I finally got to my office and put my jacket down.

Kat and I didn’t cook at eat (alone) a single time while she was home. The meals we did have at home were scrounging leftovers.

Now that you have the context, you should understand why I say “I’m kinda glad Kat’s gone so I can get back to work.” I said that a few times today and got crap for it.

I’m tired, and want to get back to work so my day has some structure to it. It turns out Kat’s more popular than me, and when she’s here, it’s a whirlwind of stuff to do. I’m glad to have less stuff.