Winter Sunrise

This was the scene over Halifax on Monday at 7:30 am. We haven't seen the sun since and are getting ready for another round of snow tonight.
A feathered friend also stopped in around 9 am. This is not a sight we see everyday, seagulls don't usually hang around our neighbourhood. Doesn't he look just a little mischievous...About half an hour later I caught him on the deck....
Now the crows have also discovered my compost stash...They must be getting really hungry and a little mess is the least of my worries if they can get a little morsel out of it! I guess I will have to clean it up before the snow flies!

New Blog!

My Mom made her very own blog! Click on the photo and take a peak. It might interest some of you! She is an amazing photographer, birder/naturalist and sky enthusiast!

Snow!

We have had a LOT of crazy weather this year. The amount of flooding and heavy snowfalls in other part of Atlantic Canada has been unprecedented. We have been fortunate as Halifax has come out mostly unscathed. We have had a greenish winter so far but finally had a couple of significant snowfalls this week and I thought I would share some photos of our walk in the snow on Sunday.
We have an old cemetery close by and it is a quiet refuge from the city. I go there often for a walk, run or just to admire the old stones and read about those who lived here before us. Joseph Howe and Alexander Keith are buried here!

Finally, I saw this little guy in the park...don't you just love his hair!
Typical of Nova Scotia, it has warmed up and rained a little. So a lot of the snowmen around the city are looking sad and shapeless. It may not last much longer, so I am glad we got to enjoy it!

CSN Product Review: French Press

It has been almost 2 months since I posted that I would be doing a product review for CSN stores and I am just getting around to posting my review. As you know from the title I got a french press. Not just any french press...the Bodum Columbia 12 cup Double Wall Stainless Steel French Press!

Isn't it gorgeous!?!

We used to have an insulated coffee pot for our drip coffee maker BUT it died (as well as a few other before it!) after only 2 years! So in the interest of producing less garbage and drinking better coffee we switched to a more permanent solution. We bit the bullet and invested in a large insulated french press because we both LOVE coffee in the morning but I always get up quite a bit earlier than Diego so in a normal glass press the coffee is cold by the time he gets to it or he needs to make a fresh batch because I drank the 500 ml!
I love that it is stainless steel. The shape is classy but can go with any decor. The handle is solid and ergonomic making it a pleasure to pour. Most presses have the metal coil on the plunger so to avoid the metal on metal, Bodum replaced it with a silicone ring. Silicone is inert so it doesn't leach any toxins into your coffee nor does it leave a flavour. The only part of the press that is plastic is the part of the lid that has the pouring screen. I would have preferred stainless but unfortunately all presses that I have seen are like this and I did look at many before choosing this one! Luckily, your coffee only comes into contact with it very briefly when you pour.
I love the spout. Our old french press had this tiny triangular indent (like most) that almost always ended up pouring out the sides and onto the counter. It always made a mess. This spout is large and rounded allowing it to pour so smoothly and I have yet to spill a drop!
It does keep the coffee warm for 2-3 hours if you filled it to the top to start with and about half the time if you fill it half way. I am sure if you warmed up the carafe before you put the coffee in, it would stay warm longer but I don't want to use more water and electricity than necessary. However, there are some pros and cons with the lid. The good thing about the lid the strainer for any stray grinds but also when you turn the lid it blocks the opening preventing the steam from escaping, helping to keep it warm. Not all presses have this feature. In my books this was essential for keeping the coffee warm. However, the lid itself is not at all insulated! So the rising heat is lost via conduction through the metal cooling rather than keeping the coffee warm. That also means that the lid gets very hot to the touch making it difficult to turn the lid to the strainer position to be able to pour your cuppa joe. You won't burn yourself but you can't always turn the lid in one swoop because it is quite hot. That being said, I love having had steaming coffee pour out of the press 2 hours after I made it, which is more than I can say the old insulated drip coffee carafe could do!

Holiday Coffee!

Overall, I am very happy with my new press and would recommend it to anyone in the market for one. Like most things there is room for improvement but the issues themselves are in my opinion very minor. The hot lid is easily overcome by using a tea towel and I am very satisfied with the amount of time it keeps our coffee warm. Also, all the parts are dishwasher safe, which was an important deciding factor now that we have a new dishwasher! We have been using our new press everyday since we got it and I would not go back to any other method of making coffee...except maybe the occasional espresso. This a great daily workhorse and looks great on the table for a dinner party.

The last thing I wanted to comment on was the service I received from CSN stores. I ordered my press in mid-November and I expected ~2 weeks delivery since it was coming from the USA via ground shipping. After 2.5 weeks and no press, I was contemplating calling CSN when I received an email and a phone call from them informing me that UPS had lost the package and asking if I wanted a replacement or a refund. I immediately responded that I would like another one sent but that I needed it to get to me before I left for holidays on Dec 22. The press was sent out the same day and a week later, 5 days before the 22nd, I received my press. The customer service was amazing! I was astonished that they contacted me before I contacted them and they did everything to accommodate my deadline. They were prompt, pleasant and polite. I would definitely buy again from CSN stores and recommend them to anyone looking for something they cannot find locally.

If you have any questions, leave a comment and I will get back to you!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!

Image from: http://fireworksfx.com/display.html

Ok, so maybe this wasn't take last night but it sure is a beautiful display on the MacDonald Bridge in Halifax!

Wishing you all love, health and happiness in 2011!

My new relationship with...FISH!

Life has been absolutely INSANE since September started! I introduced some new teaching material that has been a great learning experience for me but has kept me off of blogging among other things. This is a post I have been working on for a while that I finally had the chance to finish!

This is the latest chapter in my adventure into liking all food. I am on a journey to be a less picky eater and enjoy all food that is presented to me. I think that with some amazing recipes and the slow but consistent approach to eating something you dislike, you will start to actually enjoy those recipes and even want to eat those dreaded items.

Foods on my dislikes list include onions, mushrooms, fish, seafood and lamb. So far I have been incredibly successful with onions and mushrooms. Onions were fairly easy because I could tolerate them cooked but what really sold me on onions were the small grilled onions (cebollitas) in Mexico...oh so sweet and delicious in a taco!
Mushrooms took a little longer. It took a year of eating mushroom risotto with the mushroom chunks getting bigger with every time we made it to finally be ok with eating them in other dishes. I am now even eating them raw in spinach salad!!!!

Image from: manjamakan.tumblr.com

I have tried scallops...twice...once in 2008 (see the delicious Mexican recipe posted here) and again this past Spring when my parents visited for Easter. I guess I have been slacking on my slow and consistent method here...

In comes the fish. Fish has been on my I really DON'T like at all list for a long time...well except when beer battered, deep fried and covered in tartar sauce...but then is it still really fish at this point? Knowing this, imagine Diego's surprise when I came to him and suggested we buy a half share in the new Community Supported Fishery (CSF - for more info on it see EcoYogini's great post and interview here) called Off the Hook. The idea of paying in to the fishery at the start of the season to share in the bounty and in the hard times with the fisherman was very appealing. Not to mention getting to know the fisherman and supporting a sustainable hook and line fishery rather than the destructive dragging of the ocean floor. Bottom trawling, which is how bottom dwelling fish like haddock, cod, hake, etc. are caught and is THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE way to fish.

Image from: http://shrimpsuck.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html
Image from: http://www.leicesterfoe.org.uk/marine.html

The giant net drags across the bottom catching everything in its path (including deep sea corals, sponges, crabs, and the list goes on) and wreaking havoc on the bottom. Destroying the habitat that these fisheries actually depend on (talk about shoot yourself in the foot)...

...and throwing away anything not in the quota. This deep sea coral grows in the dark cold waters of the Atlantic and took HUNDREDS of years to grow that size and it is just being tossed over the side of a deep sea dragger.

Image from:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/sci_nat_bottom_trawled0_bottom_cleared/html/5.stm

The critters below are also bycatch and are what most of the fish we are catching eat, so we are at the same time decimating the food source of any remaining fish...any wonder why our fisheries are collapsing...we are taking out too much, destroying their habitat and food supply with destructive fishing methods and near the coasts we are also assaulting their nurseries with our pollution and coastal development...

Image from: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/tags/bottom-trawling?page=1

Knowing all of this, I bit the bullet and decided that we would try one season and if I hated it...at least I gave it a fair go and helped the program get off the ground. We had 5.5 lbs of fresh whole but gutted fish almost every week for 18 weeks this Summer and Fall! This translates into fish for at least 3 meals a week!!

Haddock about to be filleted.

I got to fillet my first ever fish and did a decent job of it! Although this ended up being Diego's job most of the time.
We always cooked all of the fish right away since freezing them or leaving them whole for a couple of days added to the fishy flavour that I don't enjoy. The fish were always less than 15 hours out of the water before they hit our pan. The taste was amazing! No fishy flavour whatsoever and once cooked they kept their fresh taste for the three meals!
To ease me into eating fish we started with an old favorite....Fish Tacos! These are essentially battered and fried little pieces of fish that you can put into a fresh corn tortilla with some Mexican Tartar sauce and Guacamole. Delicious! We used a typical beer batter (with Corona of course) and the Mexican Tartar sauce is just mayo, pickles and grated carrots! I will post my AMAZING guacamole recipe soon. :) It is a party pleaser.
After a couple of weeks of fish tacos we ventured to try another Mexican Favorite that I and all of the guests we made it for enjoyed very much and it is very simple...however, I don't remember what it is called! It is fresh haddock fillets layered (in this order) with juliened onions, diced tomatoes, secret sauce (see below) and topped with some dabs of butter. You wrap this all up in a large amount of tin foil and bake it in the oven or BBQ. You want enough foil to be able to flip it often to cook evenly and not have any juices come out. We ate this several times because it is SO GOOD!

Secret Sauce:
75% mayo, 25% mustard

I would make enough to have 2-3 tablespoons of sauce per layer of fish.

Once it is cooked (this will depend on how much fish you have) just slice open the top of the foil layer stick some spoons in and place it in the middle of the table. Spoon contents into a corn (or flour) tortilla, add some guacamole and ENJOY!
Closer to the end, I started to feel a little more adventurous and we made an amazing baked lemon rosemary haddock with a dill cream sauce. I used fresh rosemary from my garden and dill from the farmer's market. I lay the fillets on a bed of lemons then topped them with a few lemons and sprigs of rosemary and baked them in the oven at 350F until the fish was cooked (30-40 mins). In the mean time I made a creamy dill sauce using this recipe. We ate it with a side of Greek style baked sweet and red potatoes with onions (essentially olive oil with a very small amount of dill, and salt and pepper to taste, baked in my cast iron dutch oven in the oven beside the fish). The combination was AMAZING! Neither the dill or the rosemary were too strong. They were subtle and the combination was perfect. I scarfed this plate down pretty fast!
One of the last recipes we tried was the Moist Baked Haddock recipe found here. I did substitute the Pepperidge farm stuffing with Italian style bread crumbs.
We did enjoy this recipe but we really liked the bread crumbs so we would often just bread and bake the fish (no mayo, etc) to eat in tacos (of course with some salsa or guacamole!) or just straight up with some veggies on the side.

We both loved joining the CSF and will join again in the Spring. It is an amazing opportunity to support a truly sustainable fishery and get all the benefits of eating fish while feeling good rather than guilty about it! We also, really got to know the organizers and the fisherman. We met their families and know our money is going to support them directly and not some faceless corporation. If you are in Halifax, the Valley or Digby and you eat fish, you should definitely check them out!

To learn more about fisheries you can watch the documentary The End of the Line or take a look at Seachoice.org.

Don't have a CSF near you...here are some things that you can do:

1. There are some fisheries that are being sustainably managed, buy these fish. To know which ones check out the Canadian Seafood Guide and the Canadian Sushi Guide at Seachoice.org.
2. When in a restaurant, ask questions about where the fish comes from and how it was caught! The restaurant owners will become more informed and buy what the customer wants but they won't know unless you ask!
3. Not all fisheries are equally destructive so you will need to arm yourself with information to be able to make the right choices and ask the right questions.
   

Happy Fishing!

How could I resist?

Aren't these gorgeous??? I have never seen any with the red centre. I bought them on Remembrance Day and thought the red was a perfect fit. I have 3 more orchids that have flower stalks growing and I never remember which is what colour so I always get a surprise!

Still no package from CSN, even though I check every day...must have been held up at the border but it can't be long now!