CAN

Behold this marvel of modern science!

These jars are filled with perishable food yet they do not rot. Or at least not yet. Canning is not scary and will not kill you, unless you can non-acidic food like (non-pickled) vegetables and they develop botulism. So refrain from doing that and don't be afraid.

On the bottom of the pyramid are pickled beets. In the next row are bread and butter pickles, which are sweet pickles with onions. At the top is a container of freezer jam, which I made from a twenty pound box of peaches. I cooked the fruit for a minute or two with a little bit of sugar, added some lemon juice, thickened it with freezer jam pectin, and then froze it. I also made six quarts of pear sauce with cinnamon. I have so far resisted the temptation to eat my winter rations, so I can't tell you how anything came out yet. But I'll report soon. Here's a closer look at the beets:

Julia Child's Leek and Potato Soup

How could I have missed it for so long! It's a recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking that isn't outdated (Aspics and Molds, 544-6), uses no extravagant ingredients (Foie Gras Stuffing with Prunes for Goose, 284), and does not involve cooking lettuce (Lettuce, Braised, 489). Also, it's the very first recipe in the book. It makes enough for 6-8 people, or for two people with some for the next day's lunch and some for the freezer. It's better on the second day. Julia Child calls for a bit of cream or butter, but I had some good milk in the fridge and used that instead with fine results. Julia Child also calls for peeling the potatoes, but that's just silly. Here's the basic recipe:

• 1 pound potatoes, chopped
• 1 pound thinly sliced leeks
• 2 quarts water
• 1 tbs. salt
• 1/3 cup whole milk or cream

Simmer the vegetables, water, and salt together, partially covered, for 40 to 50 minutes. Mash the vegetables with a potato masher (or fork, or food mill); don't puree it. Immediately before serving, add the milk (or just add a tablespoon or so to each bowl).

The recipe also calls for parsley or chives added at the very end, which I would have done if I had either. My mother likes to put cilantro in her leek and potato soup, which I also endorse. Julia Child mentions that you can add carrots, turnips, tomatoes, half-cooked dried beans, peas, or lentils with their cooking liquid at the beginning. You can also add cauliflower, cucumbers, broccoli, Lima beans, peas, string beans, okra, zucchini, shredded lettuce (oops!), spinach, sorrel, or cabbage after the soup is mashed, to be cooked for 10 minutes or so. I made my batch with some carrots and parsnips, even though parsnips aren't on this list. Deviation from a Julia Child recipe usually leads to ruination, but I got away with this one.

Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale

Sierra Nevada Northern Hemisphere Harvest Ale
Fresh Hop Ale
Chico, CA
6.7% Alcohol
Rating: 5/5

This beer reminded me of Pliny the Elder. It's powerful and direct, but there are a lot of flavors to it, and none of them are off in any way. I expected something more delicate, but I'm really happy with what I got.

More Apartment Pictures

My apartment's intruders and houseguests face this when they open the door:

Here's another shot of my bike hanging against the wall:

We hung a basket from the ceiling:

Here is a picture of Lindsay studying for prelims a few weeks ago:

And her work was not for nothing: today she learned that she (more than!) passed her exams.

Vancouver, Day 5, 9/19/2010

We set out early on the SkyTrain to Coquitlam, a suburb outside of Vancouver where Tom and Megan live. We arrived and walked to the parking lot north of the train station where we were supposed to meet Tom. After fifteen minutes, we realized the train station had two exits, and that north of the other one was a different parking lot. We went over there. Tom was patiently waiting for us there.

After a quick ride back to Tom and Megan's apartment we began eating the delicious pancakes they had made, with lots of cinnamon and clove and maple syrup. After this breakfast, we walked around in the immense park near their apartment, which is filled with a variety of mushrooms, some of which Tom and Megan have deemed probably edible.

Back in Vancouver, we went over to the Granville Island public market to pick up some bread, smoked fish, and tomatoes for the ride home. The best looking fish store had smoked sablefish, which I was excited about, but they told me it was only lightly smoked and needed to be cooked further. So, we bought some salmon instead, which turned out to be a little bit boring but still good. Before we ate this dinner on the train, we walked around Chinatown, which isn't exciting (the good Chinatown is in a suburb called Richmond, apparently). I did have a bizarre pastry, though: a century egg covered in sesame paste, wrapped up in a bun. Century eggs are preserved eggs that turn into a weird gel. I liked the combination of sweet sesame paste and egg, but the egg yolk was too sulfurous for me.

Our train ride home was nice. We ate the grapes we had brought as quickly as we could on the line for customs. On the train we ate our dinner of bread and salmon and read our books.

One of the two cats in the house where we stayed; neither one was willing to stand still.

Vancouver, Day 4, 9/18/2010

Our day began with delicious croissants at Coco et Olive, with crunchy outsides and perfectly flaky insides. Eventually we made it to the University of British Columbia campus to go to the Museum of Anthropology, but by this time we were hungry and needed lunch. We weren't in a very good area for this, but we eventually found the Boulevard Coffee Roasting Co., which had some decent-looking sandwiches in the display case. I got one with scrambled egg, sun-dried tomatoes, some sort of cheese, and some sort of red pepper spread. Lindsay got one with brie and pear and walnuts. They heated the sandwiches up a bit so the cheese got a bit melty.

At the UBC Museum of Anthropology we met Sasha, who just got his PhD and a job at UBC, and his girlfriend Sheila. We apologized for how late we were and a had a good time chatting. Then we toured the museum, which had a huge collection of native art and artifacts.

After this we went to Yaletown, the trendiest part of downtown Vancouver, sort of Soho-esque in feel. Most of the streets are laid out with one side of the sidewalk about five steps up from the street. This elevated strip is filled with outdoor restaurant seating. We wandered around looking for a sushi place called Honjin our hosts had recommended. After we methodically walked back and forth down trying to cover every block in turn (which is actually fun!), we found a large map with a list of restaurants and went straight there. We had tiny dishes of spinach with with a sesame sauce, squid with a sweet soy sauce, and pickles. The spinach was good though I found the sauce a bit too peanut buttery. I liked the squid a lot: it turned out to be raw, and after a bit of chewing it would give in and feel rich and tender. The pickles were great. We also had sockeye salmon sashimi, two pieces of mackerel sushi, and a roll with some pickles vegetable inside. We had a hard time ordering because we barely know anything about Japanese food and most of the sushi was listed only with Japanese names. So, we didn't get much food at all. Also, none of the beer looked exciting, and we wanted to go somewhere else and get some, maybe with french fries. And that's what we did, at the Yaletown Brewing Co., which according to an article I read in one of those free city papers was a craft-brewing pioneer in Vancouver. The brewpub had a corporate, touristy feel, but the fries and beer were excellent. I had an IPA, and Lindsay had the seasonal Belgian Wit, and I couldn't say which was better. (Lindsay says hers!) We had a beautiful walk back over the Cambie St. bridge to get back.

Vancouver, Day 3, 9/17/2010

After a leisurely morning in which we caught up on a summer's worth of sleep, we borrowed our hosts' bikes and went to Kitsilano, another district south of downtown. We parked our bikes, checked out a beach, and got some Indian food at Rangoli, the cheaper version of a fancy restaurant called Vij's. We had black chickpea fritters with tomatoes and a rice pilaf and a slaw-like cabbage salad, and blackened eggplant with curried chickpeas. The fritters were amazing, with a texture like a meatball and a perfectly spiced sauce. No spices I cook with ever taste that good and clear. The eggplant's skin was really burnt to a crisp--I never would have had the nerve to cook it like that--and it was wonderfully smokey. The chickpeas were in a sweet tomato sauce, again spiced in a way that I can't approximate. It also came with an intensely cucumbery rajta and a thin flatbread that was slightly tough but slightly buttery.

We left and wanted to read--relaxing was a big priority for us on this trip--so we stopped in a café. At first I thought they only had espresso-based drinks, but it turned out their drip coffee was just listed as "java" on the menu. Every once in a while Canada does seem like a foreign country!

We biked over a bridge and then followed signs to the seawall, a path that goes all the way around Vancouver's downtown through Stanley Park. We rode on this pretty path and eventually turned to head back to a bridge to take us home, riding through a residential neighborhood made up of high-rise apartment buildings. What should have been overwhelming somehow wasn't. For whatever reason--architects and urban planners, please explain--instead of towering above me, the buildings just felt like they happened to go up for a while.

View from the Burrard St. bridge.

Despite Vancouver's excellent bike infrastructure, the ride to the Cambie St. bridge was a little bit scary. Biking unfamiliar routes in traffic is just never pleasant. One thing that made me feel better was a biker who merged in front of me and then biked all the way to the bridge with no hands, while I nervously gripped my bike's brakes. At one point he started waving his hands around like he was doing very relaxed calisthenics. It was weird.

Once we were back, we looked up some bus schedules and headed back to Granville Island to see a Fringe Festival play and meet our friends Tom and Megan who just moved around here. The buses were great: they had a dedicated lane, the seats are placed so that people can get on and off quickly, an LED display gives the next stop, and they seem to run often. We are beginning to annoy ourselves with all our talk about how great Vancouver is compared to Seattle.

We went walking around with Tom and Megan after the show looking for a place to get a snack. Nothing looked appropriate, and eventually we walked into a fancy supermarket called Capers that also sold prepared food and had a place to sit. After we went in we discovered it was a disguised Whole Foods! (Actual comment from the Yelp page of Capers: "Yup, I was a bit sad when the Canadian version of Whole Foods actually got taken over by Whole Foods...") Nevertheless we bought a loaf of bread, a piece of hard goat cheese, and some Concord grapes (which were seedless--I didn't know such a thing existed). We had a nice dinner of this, discussed the saga of Tom and Megan's pet snake that was refused entrance to Canada (it will be able to join them in a few weeks), and took the bus back to the house. Tom and Megan stayed on the bus and caught the SkyTrain back to where they live outside of Vancouver.