What Must You Think of Me!

For years I have heard people joke about the iTunes recommends section of the iStore "you don't know me, iTunes!!" Though the suggestions sometimes feel insulting, I can see the path fairly clearly and the conclusions are logical, even if taste is not. Amazon recommends however, those require leaps of the imagination.

Regular readers will be aware that I teach karate and enjoy cooking. It should come as no surprise that I have purchased books about karate and cookbooks such as home canning guides. Both are activities I want to do safely without injuring or poisoning anyone and with all due respect, I don't believe everything I find on the internet.

After teaching karate for 10 years, I worry that my drills might be getting a little stale, so one of the books I purchased was about conditioning for martial arts. I thought I'd learn some new exercise ideas to liven up my advanced classes (I didn't, the book was useless). When Amazon recommended books on Kettlebell training, it didn't seem that far fetched. "Jailhouse Strong" was a little unsettling, both that it exists in the first place and that a search engine would lump it in with fitness and martial arts. Why does everyone think all dojos Kobra Kai from Karate Kid?

What really surprised me were the prepper book suggestions. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term "prepper" it is a new word for "Survivalist" - people who actively prepare for the apocalypse. As a Red Cross trained Disaster Relief volunteer, I understand the importance of having an emergency kit in case of fire, flood or natural disaster, (even though I don't) but that is child's play to the prepper. Preppers are more the modern equivalent to the bomb shelter builders of the 1950's. Prepper websites include such topics as, "safely crossing a fence with a firearm" and debating "bugging out vs hunkering down". All this because I wanted to enjoy my favourite roasted tomato sauce during winter when produce available at the grocery store is flavourless. 

Taken individually, these recommendations are funny. Put them together and you get the kind of profile the NSA would red flag. What Amazon seems to be suggesting is that I am hording supplies for the inevitable doomsday that I may or may not be planning to cause and preparing my body to survive my prison stay once the authorities catch up with my unhinged ass. 

Seriouly, Amazon, you do not know me!

A Workshop, A Hike, And A Big Jam

Saturday I attended a wonderful (and free!) canning workshop that was part of the the City of Oshawa Food for Though series and sponsored by BerNardin. Although I had already experimented with my first canning project (had to use those tomatoes while they were ripe!), I have a lot to learn (and did I mention it was free?).

We watched the entire process from ingredients selection to making and canning the finished product. Encouraged that I hadn't made too many mistakes with the salsa, I immediately went out to buy pears from a fruit stand and a stock pot large enough to not boil over and scald me this time. The result was 1.5 l of delicious pear vanilla jam and the decision to preserve Christmas this year so I'm sorry if you were looking forward to a really fancy gift, you are getting jars filled with mushy goodness.

Lovely ladies volunteering their time to teach us

But before I could get to the cooking there were woods to hike, mushrooms to marvel at and kids to shake my head at. Sunday was a rare and wonderful day, indeed, as my guy had a day off, it is late September and the day was sunny and warm. To the woods! This time, to a ravine not far from our house that I have shamefully never explored before. On our hike I found the most vibrant and wonderful looking mushroom growing all by it's self.

It's red, so it must be delicious, right?

Despite my assertions that the tastiest foods on the planet are red and so this must be edible and delicious, my guy coaxed me away from the little fungus with nothing but a photo to remember it by.

We encountered the usual trappings in a wooded area surrounded by suburbia, mountain bike jumps and trails, trenches for pant ball games, red cups - lots of red cups and fire pits. Then just evidence of fires having been set, directly under trees...and then fires set in trees!!!!!

Burnt out tree - What were they thinking?

Children, please allow me to explain, it is evident that you like to drink and generally party in the woods. That's fine, I'm not very eager to come tripping through here at night anyway, but please realize that if you burn it down, you won't have it to play in anymore. This lovely protected greenspace will be replaced by a subdivision in a heartbeat and there will be even more of you sitting around on a Saturday night complaining that there is nothing to do. I hope they don't burn it down, I'm really looking forward to snowshoeing here in the winter.

(You can find the recipe for Pear Vanilla Jam here: http://foodinjars.com/2011/02/pear-vanilla-jam/)

It's Getting All Steamy Up In Here

We consume a lot of salsa in my home, and I've never had a salsa I liked better than the kind I make. I think it's my heavy handed cilantro use. Many a wintry Sunday I've made my kitchen look like a pre-Industrialization battlefield with bits of red tomato carcass everywhere, the juice dripping down my arms, counter, cupboard door...all the while lamenting that I cannot wait until tomatoes have flavour again. Well, that time is now and I am loathe to let it slip past me, so I am embarking on a brand new adventure - canning.

Quaint, a little archaic, really, really messy and, as my Guy reminds me hourly, probably more expensive than just buying jars at the store (after all, my recent foray in making apple butter resulted in a destroyed blender. How a top name brand - it starts with a K like in kitchen *ahem* blender can crumble under the load of mushy apples that have been cooked for 4 hours, cooled in the refrigerator and  suitable for a baby sans teeth  is beyond me, but I digress).

This rekindled desire to cook, bake, preserve and generally work with all things edible has been brought on by the drastic turn in temperature from 40 C with humidex to 7 C in about a week. This summer was just too hot to contemplate anything requiring the use of more heat and I lived on smoothies for most of August. Also rekindled is my Guy's snickering about how he's "tamed" me and that he has "turned" me into a "house wife". The fact that I am neither a wife, nor a house being a fact that seems to have escaped him. (The use of house wife as a derisive term is a rant that I just don't have the space to go into, suffice to say, a woman's choice to stay home or work is her own, though I am sure most of the population just doesn't have the choice in this two income economy.) Lucky for him my desire to remain a vegetarian and stay upright, mobile and healthy prevents me from ceasing all kitchen activities immediately because nothing kills my desire to make dishes that will also feed him like being called "tamed". 

I have no idea where this smugness even comes from because the only version of me he knows is the good cook/bread baker. That former self, the one who still makes me marvel when anything turns our right, had already pretty much disappeared by the time he met me. He only knows about it from the stories, so I am not sure how it is he thinks he gets the credit for my healthier lifestyle or why eating properly, with fresh whole foods, somehow makes me tame.

Tame isn't being adventurous in the kitchen, taking on new and increasingly difficult recipes and even making up a few. Tame is eating a lot of processed barely food because it's easy, and that's what everyone else does.

I have to go burn myself over steaming pots now, and I plan to make the salsa inferno, that'll teach him.