Eat: Bartered Squash

My husband had the brilliant idea of taking the leftover apple grindings from our cider pressing, mix them with cracked corn, acorns, a mineral block, and other things that deer like to feed on. He assured me that hunters would buy it. I scoffed. And then bit my words when he sold out in less than an hour.
"Back to the grind" he decided. Literally. 15 bushels of apples later, we had more deer feed, and now a surplus of cider. How can one have a surplus you ask? When the freezer, and all carboys are full. And there are still 6 turkeys to fit into said freezer. And you can't possibly sip another mouthful of cider for at least a week.
I dug through the empty wine bottles (yes, there were plenty), filled up 10 of them and took them to work. "Just trade me something" I said to co-workers.
The next day, I arrived at work to a loaf of home made bread, a jar of mustard pickles (an east coast preserve that was re-gifted to me, ha) a jar of honey, a can of beer and this:

"What the heck is this?" I tried googling squash and looking through pictures. Closest I came up with was Buttercup (it was not) and Kobacha (Nope, not that either)
The squash came in a CSA basket that my boss subscribes to. It came from Salt of the Earth farm, located at the east end of Kingston. I texted them with a picture.
"Musque de Provence squash" came the reply.
"It's a great soup squash. Google it. It's a traditional French thing. Enjoy!"

So, I lugged it home. Two days later, I stabbed it a few times, and put it in the oven.
Two hours later I pulled it out, cut it in half and scooped out all the soft, yummy roasted flesh.

Two cups of it (along with 3 eggs and one cup of maple syrup, all produced in our backyard!) went into this Brown Butter Maple Pumpkin Loaf. I don't think I browned the butter enough, I was too concerned about burning it! Also, I couldn't find the cinnamon. Until the next day, sitting in plain sight on the counter.

The rest of the squash went into soup. Which we enjoyed with fresh baked bread (I did not bake it), cheese, some of my red pepper jelly, roasted beets (they were also bartered for some cider!) with apple cider maple vinigrette and of course wine (Sandbanks Dunes is my current favourite white) Fintan ate 3 bowls at dinner.

Here's my recipe for Musque de Provence soup:

• 1 roasted squash (I think it was probably about 4-5 pounds (uncooked), minus two cups. You could also use a large butternut squash.
• 2 cups of stock or water (I used turkey)
• 1 onion, chopped
• garlic, however much you like! I used 4-5 cloves, minced
• salt, pepper, thyme, chili flakes
• cream (you could skip the cream)

Put roasted squash, onion, garlic and spices in your favourite soup pot along with stock. Simmer until onions are soft. Blend. Return to pot and reheat. Slowly stir in 1/2 cup of cream (or more or less, or none. Are you counting calories?) Season and serve. I drizzled some chili oil on the adult servings.

Enjoy :)

Third Time's a Charm! WTF Finishes WT!

Our third attempt, and third team configuration, but still with the “original” three teammates,  at Wilderness Traverse finally sees Whiskey Tango Foxtrot finishing the full course!!

Three weeks (hmm...a theme of three’s?) before the race Candice comes clean. She sprained her knee back in June, and isn’t sure how it will hold up. How do we feel about bringing another team mate into the fold? Well, the first year we raced saw a team mate change about three weeks out, so this wasn’t exactly a new idea. I think her thought is if we bring Steve on board, and her knee fails, we can still continue on as a ranked team. I’m not totally convinced Steve knows what he’s getting himself into. I laugh (nervously) over the next week as he bombards me with email messages:

“What kind of bike do I need?” 

“ I’m going to bring hot dogs!”

“What shoes should I wear?” 

“I don’t have bike lights”

Fortunately, Steve is a Parry Sound local, which also means we have a place to crash, and he knows parts of the area quite well. Definite nav plus.  Makes parts of our course plotting the night before quick and easy. Although,  he hasn’t paddle Massassagua before, and the trek between CP10 and CP12? Nope, never been there either!

After a great breakfast of waffles and sausage, we head over to the start line and GO! It’s a mass run start. I don’t like running, but it’s a rather short one, and likely the only actual running that I will have to do over the next 24 hours or so. We transition to a short bike ride and something is not right. We quickly figure out that my back tire is flat. I curse my bike mechanic back home. He was supposed to check my tires and change my tubes. Hmm...not a great start. We fix it, keep going, get through the first few CP’s in good time and hit the paddle. Where we are confident we’ll shine, after all, we are ALL paddlers. Despite the crazy wind, we make great time, passing about 9 teams along the way.. Near the end, we pull over for a quick fuel break before a rather long crossing to the end.  A man and his two sons burst through the trees, cradling shotguns, telling us they feel sorry for us with this wind. We pick our line and head to the dock at opposite shore. We arrive with a few hours of daylight to see us through the beginning of our trek. Have I mentioned yet that I turned down a wedding invite for this?

The first jog along the road brings a very strange sensation along the outer sides of my thighs. I can feel one of my shins tightening up. Now something is not feeling good in my knee. What the heck is going on? We drop down to a brisk walk instead. That feels better. We pass through the Deliverance cottages, complete with the greying-long-haired guitar playing dude to CP9 and set our bearing to take us to CP10. We arrive in decent time, to steak, tea, shoulder massages (an old friend was a volunteer here!) and the news that we are in 20th place. It’s a little past 8pm. Dinner at the wedding will be done by now, maybe speeches starting?

We realize at this point that we have a good chance of not being short coursed. We set our next bearing, and head towards CP11. Moving quicker than in past years. Although all the climbing over ridges has my knees screaming at me. Also, our hands are getting ripped apart by juniper bushes. I should be in a pretty dress dancing right now. Grant & Steve make a great nav duo, and we make it to Shangri- La before midnight. Only one small error, but the light of the heated tent showed us we missed them by a bay or two. It wasn’t until days later, that I realized that this CP was manned by the wonderful man who saved me with a single strawberry in 2013. This year, he gave me soup and water. And told me that we were going to finish….the whole course!!

As we make the LONG journey south to CP12, my knees are really giving me some troubles. But I keep thinking if Candice is still moving forward on her knee, than I have to as well. I hit my lowest point ever on this portion of the trek. I think I may have experienced my first “bonk” When we found the trail, I was stumbled along as if I was into my second bottle of wine (by this point, the wedding reception is all over, and I would be stumbling….but still in a pretty dress!) I was hallucinating (although I wasn’t the only one, at one point Steve yelled out, he “saw” a porcupine in his path) I was dehydrated (my throat felt like it was being stabbed) and food made me nauseous. I even found Grant sitting on a rock at one point. He NEVER sits in a race. We finally got into the TA, after picking our way along the shore of the Moon River, and Heather (Grant’s wife who was volunteering) took one look at me and asked how I was. I burst into tears and said I couldn’t talk about it. After a cup of hot chocolate, soup and half a gatorade I was ready to go. By 6:30 or so, we jumped on our bikes to ride the final 65km or so to the finish line.  We opted to take roads, we figure we’d be a bit faster, especially considering knees. I feel pretty good over the course of the ride, despite the fact that my bike shorts seem to be wanting to constantly give me a wedgie. Also, have you ever gotten dirt INSIDE your bike shorts? That sucks, a lot. One small nav error as we we searching for CP 14 set us back 30 minutes or so. We retraced the beginning of the race along the Seguin Trail for the final stretch over roads, as we were struggling with hills. The final 4km seemed to drag on forever….but we rolled into the finish line….22 minutes after 2:00. Elated, but slightly disappointed. Bob & Barb very kindly ranked us anyway, and we are super stoked to have finally completed the long course (140 km in 30 hours and 22 minutes), after two years of being short coursed.

A big thank you to Bob, Barb and the rest of their team and volunteers for putting on a great race. And to all of the other racers that race this, and other races, without a whole bunch other “crazy” people, we wouldn’t get to do it. Friends often ask me why….I  don’t really know the answer, but I know you understand. ;)

Play: The Game of Life

Well, Hello there! It's been awhile.
I realize it's been almost a year since I have last visited my own blog. But I've been busy! You know, raising a family, working, eating, playing, laughing...and drinking!

But, I'm back...at least for  now. I've redecorated, I hope you like visiting:)

This is what I've been up to since I last visited:

• We built a wood fired pizza oven in our back yard. (more on that later)
• My eldest son turned 10!
• We are still raising hens and turkeys.
• We've acquired an apple press. (and make our own hard cider)
• We kayaked a portion of the Saguenay Fjord as a family. The kids even did some solo paddling!
• My husband's business Kindling has taken off
• I now have an Instagram account.
• And a cell phone.
• I started my "career" as a blog contributor to other publications.
• Mt team raced Wilderness Traverse again, and finally completed the full course!
• I joined forces with a friend, and co-directed an adventure race; The Cataraqui Adventure Trek. 

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you visit again!

Eat: Soup "A"

Who doesn't love Thai food? In Kingston, there are numerous Thai restaurants. Our favourite is Pat's. They don't have a website for you to visit, this Urbanspoon post is the closest. But this isn't a story about Pat's Restaurant (although you should go if you haven't already). This is a story about Soup A.
Before we tried Soup A, we were all about number 1 and number 6. Then, one day we were daring. We ordered Soup A. And were officially smitten. It warmed us up in a way numbers one and six didn't. And the serving is HUGE (we share it). We've tried other restaurants version of Soup A....but sadly they didn't compare. Pat's has a certain.....hmmm....it's creamier and richer than others. We set out on a mission to try to re-create it at home. So, here is how our Soup A (also know as Tom Yum Goon) turned out.

The Ingredients
Most followed us home on our last trip to Toronto, where there is a great Asian supermarket we love to visit. We fill our cart with exotic fruit and veggies, well priced fish and the best price on coconut milk ever.

• 1 can of coconut milk
• shrimp (we had peeled shrimp in the freezer, but I'd get shell on next time. I used 2 small bags)
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• juice of one lime
• ginger (I think technically you should use galangal. but I couldn't find any)
• thai basil
• lemongrass
• mushrooms....I used oyster and some others I found at the afore mentioned grocer
• curry paste, I found a jar of paste that was specifically for Tom Yum soup
• 1 litre ofchicken, fish or vegetable stock 

How I did it

I poured the stock into my pot. I then added a handful of shrimp shells from my freezer (I've been saving for well over a year, for a shrimp bisque recipe in a cook book I have. It will be epic when I have about 4lbs of shrimp shells. They are very light, so I suspect this will take me another year, unless we drastically increase our shrimp consumption) If you have unpeeled shrimp, don't bother with shells. Then I cut about 2" off my lemongrass stalk, crushed it a bit and threw that into the pot.

Then I added some slices of ginger and garlic, and let the whole thing simmer away for about 30 minutes.

I scooped out the floating bits and added my mushrooms

The darker coloured ones are oyster mushrooms. The little guys hiding under them are enoki, I'm not sure what the others are.

Curry paste, basil leaves and shrimp followed the mushrooms into the pot.

After the shrimp was pink, the coconut milk was slowly stirred in

Serve our Soup A over a mound of hot cooked rice, sprinkle some lime juice and garnish with cilantro. You'll soon see why the word "Yum" is in the name of the soup!

And Shawn found it "spoon worthy" Spoon worthy you ask? Well, that is a whole other story! I will share it soon!

 Soup A: Tom YUM Goon

The verdict
While very YUM, and deemed spoon worthy, I'd love to spend an afternoon in Pat's kitchen learning his secrets. For now, this is a fine substitute. Until then, when we need our real fix, it's to Pat's we will go. 

Eat: "C" is for Cookie

You know you're desperate for cookies when you turn the oven on at the end of July to bake. But have you met July 2014? Not so many hot days. So baking cookies today, not a big deal. It's our first day off as a family this summer. Shawn and Fintan have been busily re-vamping the barn for our hen and turkeys. The turkeys have outgrown their wee corner, and needed to move into the bigger room. Iain & I, well, we did our part, then went for a bike ride and upon our return, decided cookies were in order.
We had purchased white chocolate chips last week dreaming of reverse chocolate chip cookies.
But when I jumped on line, I couldn't find ANY recipes using spelt flour (remember, Shawn has been wheat free for well over a year now) So, I made up my own cookie recipe. Yep, I did. The last time I "invented" my own baking recipe, was the fruit juice cake when I was about 12. I don't think it was any good.

So here it is:
Spelt Reverse Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup room temperature butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs (yup, from our own barn!)
1/2 cup maple syrup (yup, from our own trees!)
2 cups spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup cocoa
1 pkg white chocolate chips

Watching the timer on the first batch

Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. (hint: we don't own a microwave. It blew up a couple of years ago, and we never bothered to replace it. We heat up coffee on the stovetop. If you're like me, and don't plan ahead to make your butter room temp, I run hot water on the outside of my stainless steel mixer bowl with the butter in it. It seems to soften it enough to work) Add the eggs and syrup. Beat until all fluffy.
In a separate bowl, mix flour, cocoa and baking soda. Add to wet mixture while still beating. Fold in chips. The mix is fairly wet, this made slightly cake-y cookies. If you prefer a crisper cookie, try adding another 1/4 cup flour. I was out, so settled for cake-y cookies. Still yummy.

Iain wanted to take them out

Drop by spoonful onto cookie sheet. 9 minutes at 350c in convection oven baked perfectly. Adjust to your oven.
Enjoy with cold glass of milk, about 7 minutes out of oven!!

I think that's a thumbs up!

Play: Ooooops, we did it again! WTF races WT

Some may call us crazy, but Whiskey Tango Foxtrot decided that yes, we were going to attempt Wilderness Traverse again this year. As a team of 4 this time. Myself, Candice and Grant again, with Gerhard (who was part of the original team) joining us.

Gear explosion out of car

I spent much of my training this year focusing on my riding (I even knit myself a new bike!) as I felt that that's where I was weakest. I hoped that would pay off and make us faster as a team on the trails.
We arrived at HQ Friday in good time, unloaded our gear, sorted through our gear, and got front row seating for the course reveal.

 Here's a video of Bob, the race director revealing the course if you are interested. Or a peek at maps if you want to follow along!

The course starts off as a paddle, we all get into our canoes and line up at the start line, just in time for some early morning fisherman to yell "Start" at us....many teams did, until Bob told us to NOT start. Seconds later, he gave us the go ahead.

View of the Islands from above....tricky navigating!

Our plan was to follow the main land shore to the north tip of Meneilly Island and then cut down to the island where CP1 was. Not the shortest route, but the safest. This area is called the Thirty Thousand Islands after all, and navigating through them wasn't going to be super easy, especially since we wanted to move fast! It was very apparent early that most teams were opting for the shorter, but more challenging for navigation course, through the islands. At one point we thought we could follow the pack and rely on their nav, but this was our race, and we wanted to run it ourselves. Yes, it put us near the back of the pack, but we figured it's early yet, we'll still have a chance to make up some time. We got the CP, and continued on our way into the Naiscoot River Channel towards CP2. It was a bit tricky when we reached the middle channel, we saw a group ahead attempting a portage that we had thought to try, but as we got closer, well they were returning...not the right place. So instead, we scooted around the corner, paddled (poled?) our way through some thick lily pads, then pushed our way through some bushes into the river. The paddle along the river was relatively quick, but boring after awhile, we kept hoping to see something new around the next bend. Finally, sometime after CP2 signs of cottages appeared and we hit the "portage" over the dam. There were a few other teams there pushing through and resting, resulting in a line up that cost us some time. Finally we're on Six Mile Lake, into Little Wilson, then Wilson and then we are done! A quick 1km portage to our gear bins and transition to trek.

We moved through transition fairly quickly, a quick shoe change, food in mouth, food and water into packs, and a heavy dose of bug dope, man the mosquitoes were bad there! (they only got worse) Trotted down the trail until we hit the creek we intended on following towards Spectacle Lake. Had a fun group crossing at a set of rapids (some old river rescue courses coming into play here) followed the north shore of Spectacle and set our bearing to bushwhack our way to CP4. We felt pretty good moving through the bush here, knew where we were, and moving at a decent pace. Then another team caught up to us. When asked what bearing they were following, they responded "yours!" Ok, so we have followers. Not to be rude or anything, but we weren't really looking for company. We came out on the shore of Trout Lake, found another team who asked if we knew where we were, we answered yes, they asked where and we said at CP4, it's right over there.

CP4 team shot!

We arrived at CP4 just as the crew there were cooking up some freshly caught fish. We didn't stick around though, as yet another team was arriving, and well we weren't here for a party. We had a quick team picture snapped (I know one of the volunteers there, he emailed me the picture) and were off. Off to make an error that would later cost us.

Our intent was to bushwhack to the power line from CP4, rather than follow the shore to the trail. We moved along the shore to where we were going to start our bushwhack, but a bunch of other teams caught up to us, and we stepped aside to let them pass, and double check our map. I guess we got all caught up in the traffic, and second guessed our intent and thought, well maybe we should play it safe too. So we continued on past where we were going to turn off, found the trail (or so we thought) but it was wrong. We figured that out rather quickly when the trail veered off in the opposite direction we wanted. So we trudged back to the lake, set a new bearing and set off for a bushwhack, our original plan.  Which was not the best plan. We spent the next 3-4(?) hours bushwhacking our way slightly northeast hoping to catch the trail before the hydro line. Finally, through the treeline I spotted what I thought was the tip of a hydro pole. Candice and Gerhard confirmed my sighting, good not a hallucination. We went for it, and then hit the first bog. OK, we can cross this, it's all Labrador Tea and mossy bogginess. Kind of like walking on water bed. I had visions of going through, and not re-surfacing. That just made me move quicker. Ok, through the first one. To have another stretch in front of us. OK, let's do that 3 more times. And then a really deep, mucky 5' "water" crossing. To deep to walk, to short a distance to swim. I'm not sure what you'd call what we did, but somehow got across it.

An example of what we swam across

Only to find a swim across the swamp that was at least 50' across. So we swam. Gross. And then stumbled onto the trail. Oh, so happy. It was still light out. And we now knew where we were. We got onto the hydro line, had a quick re-fuel, pulled out our lights as we'd need them soon, and continued on our way over to Dogfish Lake. We encountered a team biking towards us.....well that was rather discouraging. But we were given some friendly advice from the team to take the north shore (that was our plan) and that the bushwhack we intended from CP5 to CP6 took them 2 hours in daylight....the road would also take 2 hours. We tucked that information away, wished them well and watched them speed off. Once we found the creek/river that led to Dogfish, and we crossed our second set of rapids we started the steep rocky trek along the shore. It is now full on dark. We are treated to a short view of the night's super moon. Gorgeous and red. But no time to stop and admire, and then it disappears behind some clouds. We spot a fire on the far shore, and some encouraging words are yelled across to us "You're going the right way!" After we lose the fire, I think I start hearing thunder in the distance. Then I hear it closer....no wait, that sounds like a generator! We have reached the cottage about halfway down the lake. We are greeted by a bunch of kids yelling "What's your name?" "Are you coyotes" A tattooed, beer drinking man hanging out by some muddy ATV's greets us. "Turn off your lights, save you batteries...come here use my light" He then tries to convince us to not continue the shore, take his road. We explain that that will take us way out of our way. Again he tried to discourage us from going on. "The shore is bad, it's worse than what you just trekked, I have extra bunks, come on in and sleep" We thank him, but explain that we are going to keep going, but promise if we run into trouble, we'll come back. He then asks us if we have protection. "What do you mean" I ask. "Guns" was his reply. Ummm, no. As we set off, we here his buddy tell him he could have been more encouraging. So he yells out "Good Luck" to us. Nice guy.

maybe not this bad....but heh, it was
dark and the middle of nowhere!

We find the ATV trail and start heading towards CP5. We are a bit confused when we see a team (the same team of guys who "followed" us before heading towards us, "You're almost there" they encourage us. Hmmm, where are they going? We get into CP5 a bit dejected, convinced we are dead last, clearly the teams we tried so hard to "ditch" moved faster from the last checkpoint than us. But no, the crew at CP5 let us know there are still teams behind us. OK, that picks our spirits up a bit. It starts to rain, and the crew also tells us that many teams have opted to take the road to CP6/TA2. Not our original plan, but we figure we can give it some thought as we move onward. It starts to rain a bit more earnestly. We are now moving along a slick, muddy wet trail in the rain. So we totally were not prepared for what happened next. Candice and Grant were just ahead of my and Gerhrad, when she suddenly grabs Grant's arm and pulls him to a stop. A Massassauga Rattle snake is there on the trail. They almost stepped on it. It is not happy with us being there. We stand still for a moment, than quickly skirt around it, and then let out our breath. Close one. Maybe that spooked us enough that it helped make the decision to take the road into CP6.

Not the one we saw....but they blend in well!

During the road trek, the rain continued and got heavier. I started thinking about the ride ahead of us. We rode the same hydro cut last year, and I remember the struggles I had. At the beginning of the race. On a dry day. In sunlight.  Lot's of hills and lot's of rock. That would be super slippery in this rain. By this point Gerhard was having some old race injuries come back to haunt him, and he was fairly certain that we was not going to continue when we got to CP6/TA2.
We arrive at CP6 to a pile of teams there. Catching some shelter under the tent. Munching on watermelon that Heather brought (Heather is Grant's wife, she came to volunteer at the race, and to drive us home) No one seems overly happy at this point. We call in that we will continue on as a team of three. We then are told that our options are to go on the full course (we have made the time cut off after all!) short course ourselves (which still involved a 35-40km road ride back to HQ) or to simply quit . Well, that was not an option. The three of us get ourselves ready, and mull over the other two options in our heads, before we get together to talk it out. I have no dry clothes left. Candice had an extra tank top in her bin. So, I'll continue in a tank top and gore-tex, no worries. I'm thinking of potentially (probably) walking my bike through much of the trail. My feet don't relish that idea. I think of my kids back home, who need me not broken. I think of a friend who was recently in a bad bike accident that happened during a race. And then I say it out loud "I think we should short course" A moment of silence, and the other agree with me. Thank You. It wasn't an easy decision, and I hope that the feeling of quitting will go away. Cause it kinda felt like that. We report to Heather that that is what we are going to do. Apparently everyone is (except the Speed Bunnies.....but then again they RAN past us on the road, so I wasn't completely surprised, man I admire them, and it looks like they rocked the hydro cut, nice work ladies!!)
We jump on our bikes and start the ride which felt really, really good. And then the deluge began, the kind of rain that makes you pull over in your car because you can't see and your wipers won't work fast enough. But we made it, got back to HQ a bit before 5am. This time, unlike last year, we got to see many other teams come in, and hear bits of their stories. And yes, I think we'll be back next year. I just want to know one thing: how do the pro teams move so bloody fast while bushwhacking?

This is what we got when we finished.....empty though.

Eat: Sunshine & Happiness in a Bowl

I was recently asked what motivates me. I emotionally stumbled through a rather predictable answer that involved my husband and sons.  But I wasn't totally satisfied with my answer. And then I stewed about it for a day and a half. Because that's what I do. Now, don't get me wrong, my family DOES motivate me, but I'd like to think that I am not totally defined by them. I mean, I was someone before I was a wife and mother, right? And somewhere in there that person is still here, she's just, well evolved.
So then, what else motivates me? Money? Nope (enough to get by seems to have been working for us) A smaller jean size? Sometimes.
I came up with it last night. Happy people motivate me. Think about it, if you do something to make others happy, you are motivated to doing more things to make them happy. If you are doing something that makes you happy, well, you're motivated to keep doing it, or other things like it! And when you surround yourself with happy people....well, you get the picture.
This epiphany came to me last night, the night before the first day of spring. And the day before the International Day of Happiness 
So, today I was motivated to do things that make me happy! I spent sometime with my youngest son this morning (ok...it was at the hospital because he is a typical 6 year old boy who falls and hurts himself, not to worry he is fine, under orders to not run or jump for two days....ummm, he's a 6 year old boy.) On our way back to school, we stopped at Starbucks for cookies and coffee (cookies=happy). I then visited with a friend, did some exercise, enjoyed some fresh air (a slow run on this snowy first day of spring) had a late afternoon cold beer with my husband. My sons helped me prep dinner, and then I cooked for my family. I love to cook, especially for others. And when it works, and everyone likes it, well that is just great!
So tonight, we had what I have renamed Sunshine & Happiness in a Bowl (even though we ate off plates) in honour of the First day of Spring, and International Day of Happiness. The Food & Drink magazine called it Coconut Shrimp Risotto with Lime & Mango.  Either way, it is a "make it again Mom" dinner....enjoy, and I wish you happiness to you and yours!