Wednesday, March 25, 2009

No Worries, Asparagus, Sugar Shack

Well, after all the fuss and fear, I got my injection yesterday and hardly felt a thing. OK, I'm a big baby, but I have remembered the pain of the one I had in my knuckle for 40 years or so, so you realise it must have been bad. Now all I have to worry about is whether it will work. As I have to call the surgeon in 3 weeks, I assume it will take a week or so to find out. One thing I am teed about, I forgot to ask him about using adhesives instead of staples for his incisions. Oh well. As it appears I won't be having an op just yet, I guess I don't need to worry. I have just 'lifted' a picture from the blog Canada's 1st Solar Farm which is written by Tim Barrie who runs the asparagus farm where I spend a lot of time in May/June/July. Right now I am counting the days until the asparagus is ready. Usually around Mother's Day which is on May 10 this year, often there is some available before that date. So I am collecting recipes for the delicious green spears. I could just dive into that picture and eat my way through it. Matt enjoys asparagus but he isn't the freak about it that I am. What a pity asparagus and chocolate don't go together - or maybe they do - perhapswith a Mole sauce from Mexico, I must investigate. I have been eating asparagus now and again through the rest of the year, but I promise you, it isn't the same vegetable as that picked fresh from the farm. For those of you who are local and have never been there, the farm is on the outskirts of Cambridge, Ontario - you can check his blog with the link from this page. As you will see, reading his blog, he is very much into solar farms at the moment. A great energy saving project. Later yesterday morning we went to Costco which is a wholesaling business where we like to buy meat in particular. We bought quite a lot to stock up our freezer including chicken and sirloin roasts plus some fish and especially some lamb chops. We had some of them for supper tonight. They have excellent lamb chops there, roasts too - apologies to some of my readers who don't like the stuff. Having broken the bank, we came home and packed it all away. We also bought a big box of Ferrero Rocher which some of you may remember is one of my favourite chocolates. I in fact discovered, the box we bought in Costco held over over 1 1/2 times as many chocolates as the ones we get at our local store for about the same price. We maybe saved a couple of dollars, but its all savings nevertheless. Unfortunately some of the things they sell are in such large quantities that we would never use them up. Great blocks of cheese for instance. Everything is in bulk. I'm not sure if I mentioned that we booked the cottage in North Carolina after all, it turns out that the insurance offered with the booking will cover us for pre-existing conditions so long as they are more than 60 days old, they will also cover us for our trip to and from the cottage. This is marvellous so we are thrilled to bits about it. There are some slides of the cottage at this site if you are interested. You can actually see the ocean from the upper deck, but it is a short walk across the road and then over the dunes onto the beach. Most, if not all, the properties actually right by the beach are either too large or too expensive for us. OK if you have a bunch of people travelling with you. In the LCBO's Food and Drink magazine, they have a section on lightening up food. Usually their recipes are pretty rich and decadent. The pork chop recipe I posted on Monday was one of them. I thought I should follow that up with a recipe for lighter Brownies. The first time I ever ate a brownie was in Canterbury, Kent at a restaurant owned by a young American who had been at University there. Don't know if the restaurant is still there, the food was excellent. Fudgey Brownies Pick up a jar of baby food for this recipe next time you are at the grocery store. Yes, baby food! Prune that is. It adds a rich texture to the brownies without the fat. And a little extra fibre, too. These special brownies have an intense chocolate flavour. 3 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, chopped 1 Tbs butter 3/4 cup granulated sugar 1 egg 1 egg white 1 jar strained prunes (see Tip) 1 Tbs vanilla 1/2 cup each all-purpose flour and unsweetened cocoa powder 1/2 tsp baking powder Place chocolate and butter in heatproof bowl set over hot (not boiling) water and stir occasionally until melted. Remove bowl from heat. Stir in sugar, egg, egg white, prunes and vanilla until smooth. Place flour, cocoa powder and baking pwder into a fine mesh sieve and sift into chocolate mixture. Stir until combined well. Heat oven to 350°F. Scrape into parchment or foil-lined baking pan and bake in oven for about 20 minutes or until tester inserted in centre comes out with moist crumbs. Yield 16 pieces Tip: Substitute bean or date purée for the baby food if desired. You will need 1/2 cup. To make bean purée, drain and rinse 1 cup of canned kidney, pinto or black beans. Purée in the processor until smooth, adding water or fruit juice to thin out slightly if needed. My Comment: Food and Drink recommend a good port with this dessert or a nice cognac. Works for me. Have a great day.

No comments:

Post a Comment