Recent Thrift Store Finds
Hello! Here are the spoils from a recent trip to the Value Village thrift store.
I picked up a grab-bag of ceramic coasters, based on the purple one I could see on the top of the stack. You can't open the bags before you buy them, so don't see exactly what you're getting and luck plays into it. In this bag, I got three lovely coasters, originally from Crate and Barrel, with an imprint of leaves on them, and two plain ones that aren't as attractive as the others but sure to be useful.
Homemade Soup : Curried Corn and Tuna Chowder
'Tis the season for a bowl of nice hot soup, so here's the recipe for a longtime favourite around here. This is something we always have the ingredients for because it calls for staples in most everyone's cupboards and fridge, including canned or frozen corn and canned tuna fish, so it's a good thing to make when you think you have nothing in the house.
We regularly have it for lunch or a light dinner, and have also served it as a first course at dinner parties, where it has been very well received, resulting in many requests for the recipe. Even people who didn't think they liked curry have loved it.
This is something I've been making since I was in school. At that time it was a great choice for budgetary reasons, but nowadays we have it because it really is quite delicious. It has a nice hit of heat to it that adds to the warming effect, on a cold winter's day. To stretch it out to serve more people, you can also add in a can of salmon too.
It starts with the making of a roux, which is basically cooking butter and flour together, and then adding liquid, resulting in a thickened liquid. This might be a new technique for some, and might be something you've avoided, because you could end up with a lumpy, unappealing mess. But there's the trick to making it silky smooth every time. This technique can be used as a base for other creamy style soups and sauces too.
Here's what you do : Melt your butter in a pot, then stir in the flour. Cook this for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. It will be grainy and dry and the mixture will begin to brown a bit ... just make sure it doesn't burn. Now, remove it from the heat (meaning take it right off the burner), and stir or whisk in about 1/4 cup of very cold water (I use water that has been in the fridge). Really stir that around, to make a smooth paste. Then gradually add more cold water, a bit at a time, continuing to stir. All the lumps should pretty well be dissolved. Return the pot to the stove and heat it up and cook away any floury taste. Add more water, if required, for what you're making (more for soup and less for a cheese sauce, for example.)
Note, that in this recipe, there is the addition of some chopped onion sauteed in the butter before the flour is added, and some curry powder and cumin added just before the flour. But everything else about making the roux into this soup is the same as described above.
I'll be repeating those instructions within the recipe too, so if you print it up, you'll have it handy.
Pictures From the Weekend : Three Reasons to Celebrate
Here we are on Tuesday, following a 3 day weekend. Before I barrel right in with the recap of our weekend, I want to say that I hope you had a good weekend too, regardless of how many days you had off!
As the title suggests, we had 3 reasons to celebrate - (1) Valentine's Day on Saturday (2) Our friend Andrea's recent Birthday, and (3) A Public Holiday we celebrate here, called Family Day.
We'll begin with Saturday, Valentine's Day ...
Handmade Hanging Heart Valentine Decorations
As the saying goes, makers gonna make, so I felt the familiar pull to do some hand-sewing this past week. As a result, there are a few new little things hanging around our home right now, in honour of Valentine's Day tomorrow -- these Felt, Sequin and Bead Hanging Heart Ornaments.
Our pal Isabel went for a holiday in Montreal last week and very kindly brought us back some pretty special bagels. Anyone who has ever had a Montreal-Style bagel will know why these are considered to be a treat, worthy of the luggage-space required to bring some home to friends. As described on wiki here, they are 'a distinctive variety of handmade and wood-fired baked bagel. In contrast to the New York-style bagel, the Montreal bagel is smaller, sweeter and denser, with a larger hole, and is always baked in a wood-fired oven. It contains malt, egg, and no salt and is boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked in a wood-fired oven, where the irregular flames give it a dappled light-and-dark surface colour. Montreal bagels, like the similarly shaped New York bagel, were brought to North America by Jewish immigrants from Poland and other Eastern European countries; the differences in texture and taste reflect the style of the particular area in Poland in which the immigrant bakers learned their trade.' These bagels specifically remind me of Valentine's Day actually, so the timing was right. It's been six years now since this happened, but Nick and I went on a romantic trip to Montreal over Valentine's once. That was the only time we've ever traveled for this holiday, and the perfect memories of our visit to this beautiful city are etched in my head. We took the train to and from, spoke French, drank champagne in a ritzy restaurant, bundled up well (it was cold out!!) and took walks in the perfect winter-wonderland weather. Oh, and of course, we ate Montreal bagels for every breakfast, in an authentically old fashioned delicatessen, down the street from our hotel. One afternoon we happened upon the epicentre of bagel making in Montreal, St. Viateur, where they've been making them for 62 years, and are probably the reason why Montreal-Style bagels are a distinct 'thing'. They make them in-house, right before your eyes. It's really neat to see.Love is Having a Friend Who Brings Bagels
