Making Love in the Kitchen

Everyone who spreads a little of my All Purpose Edible Body Butter on their hands, lips, cuticles, or face is always so excited by it- declaring it good enough to eat. I, of course, remind them that they can. That it actually is good enough to eat, meaning everything contained within it is 100% edible. Then I suggest they get an extra jar to keep in the boudoir. Everyone has a bit of a nervous giggle and then they get a second jar.

At my recent Edible Beauty Care workshop (next one, sad for you, isn’t until April), I decided to impress my guests by whipping up, on the spot, without first testing it, a warm smoothie latte that would, in fact, taste just the same as my Edible Body Butter, and using nearly identical ingredients.

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Friends and lovers. It’s that sweet, sweet time again.
That time where my dad comes over to the kitchen, we paint cat whiskers on our face as we dress up as Halloween Cats.

In the past, you have seen us as Cat Burglars, Cool Cats, and Jungle Cats. This year we went for a Mexican Cat theme makes almost no sense at all but since my dad and I have this ability to take an idea and run with it- we ran and no one caught up with us to tell us it made no sense. In fact, even my dad and I didn’t notice that it made no sense until we actually started filming- wondering what cats had to do with Mexico and what Mexico or cats had to do with brownies or pumpkin. Love us simply for our stream of consciousness and creativity.

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It’s my birthday today. Oh me, oh my. As of today I am a whopping 32 years old. Yep. I always thought by the time I was 32 I’d be all grown up, with a grown up job, maybe running my own little biz, travelling the world, have a sweet man-panion by my side and enjoying other such lovely indulgences as coffee-like dairy-free ice cream, and hopefully not looking a day over 30… maybe even 28.

And by golly gee me, I think I have done it. The abundance is sweetness. And to celebrate my birthday, my besties over at Hamilton Beach Canada are helping me, help you celebrate. We’re giving away an ice cream maker!

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It all started with this gorgalicious ceramic dish with a lid that I picked up at my absolute favourite-if-it-didin’t-exist-I’d-be-naked-store Anthropologie. I saw it and immediately thought, TAGINE central. I don’t know why. Just something about being able to open that lid, have the steam burst out and my getting to announce a fine tah-dah to my dining companion.

The thing is, I am pretty sure I have never actually had a tagine before that I liked. They most often had lamb in them and I am just not that in to eating laaa-aaaa-aaamb. But when fall rolls in, something in the abundance of root veggies at the market, combined with my desire to eat cozy food and not have to work that hard for it, made this one bought adventure a must.

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We work our patooties off around here- as you may have noticed, but we also cook a little here and there, and do our best to laugh until we cry once in a while. It’s part of our creed really. Up there I am rocking the awesome onion goggles Alexa introduced to our kitchen. Speaking of Alexa, I am pretty sure she never wants to look at cauliflower again.

And Jill, she is so over squash.

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A few weeks ago, the team here participated in an event called Soupalicious. The preparation for this involved us cooking up 20 litres of soup. By the end of that weekend we were totally souped out. And then soome. Now, weeks later, we are still haunted by it for 3 reasons.

1) We still have 14 liters of soup in the fridge.

2) It still smells like curry in the kitchen.

3) We still have a box of juice monkey onions, 2 fart-worthy cauliflowers, one lonely old leek, and a big ol’ bag of carrots with no place to go. After giving most of it away at a workshop…and frankly to anyone on the streets who would take it, I decided to take a couple carrots home and turn them into something magical. And ooooh boy that I did.

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You know those people who go on those re-donk-you-lus cleanses that essentially sound like they’re spending a week, crash course style living the way you’ve been living for the last five years, only to go back at the end of it and start eating like the slothy fatty McFatter standard North American processed diet full of wheat, cheese, booze and sugar?

Wait a second! You’re not one of them too are you?

Here’s the thing most people have to learn about detox. It’s not a diet. A detox should not be a crash anything. It’s not something you can do twice a year where for 1 week you drink epsom salts, consume only lemonade and enema your poopershnickle out the hooha. The best of the best way to detox is to make 80% of what most people would consider a cleanse, your everyday way of living. Make sense?

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I was offered a task. It’s one of those tasks that make me want to cartwheel over the kind of tasks that have become part of my job.

My long lost lover, fellow nutritionista, long distance pen pal, around the world adventurer, and momma friend Gabriela, the wordstress and recipe mistress behind the blog The Picky Foodie, emailed me asking if I would play in her cookie games.

Her desire was to for 10 of her food loving/ baking friends from around the fair globe to take her basic cookie recipe and make it our own.

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I love kale chips as much as the next nutritionista and (kale chip lover). Hence my desire to continue creating new and ever more awesome town kale chip recipes that cause me to eat entire heads of kale in single sittings followed by the need to drink about 9 litres of water. And let me tell you- eating a full head of kale in one sitting followed by that much water- well, let’s just say that things will be moving and grooving in the colon cleansing department.

So if you just met me this past weekend at the veg festival welcome, and you have some catching up to do.

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We all have those veggies we don’t really like. The ones we know are great for us, but for whatever reason, they just aren’t the ones we would ever reach for when we are staying on our game and desiring a healthy snack.

For me, it’s carrots and celery. I wish to bits that a handful of carrots were a desirable snack for me but they just aren’t. Maybe it’s because they’re so freaking hard and I have wires cemented to the back side of my front and bottom teeth, a souvenir of the years of braces. Every time I bite into one of these shard-of-glass like veggies I am fairly sure they are going to crack off that cemented wire and I will find myself back in the orthodentist’s chair with one of those big plastic speculum type deals stretching my mouth unnaturally far from my face, all while surrounded by twelve year olds.

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Though I am not a massive fan of the BBQ, I felt I couldn’t let a whole summer go by without offering at least one recipe that actually goes on the Q. Why am I not a fan of BBQ’d food?

BBQs tend to cook food at very high temperatures. Additionally, most peeps are not grilling veggies on their BBQ but throwing on big hunks of fatty meat which can be become a wee toxic when that fat drips through, burns up and smokes back up. As well when fat that hangs on to the meat gets charred, I believe the word for that is carcinogenic. Lastly, from as early on as I can remember, my dad loved BBQing and never failed to show off how he singed the hair off his arm in the process. That’s just gross.

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Everyone loves home baked cookies. And they really don’t take much time at all.

You mix the dry. Chop a little chocolate. Throw a couple blobs of cookie dough on a parchment lined cookie sheet. And just like that, fresh home baked cookies are served!

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Do I really even have to answer that? Really? Do I?

No. Because it’s obvious. The berries!

A standard breakfast, so commonly a go-to, is granola and yogurt (or your fave nut milk), and a splash of berries. Why not turn that equation upside down and inside out? Make the berries the main attraction!

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How are you enjoying your last day off before we go back to school?

Wait a second? Are you going back to school?

I am, my own school and my face will likely still be smudged with chocolate from today’s cooking demo at Toronto Harbourfront’s Hot and Spicy Food Festival.

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I went to Edmonton for the first time a few months ago and came upon a place called Earth’s Aromathique. I was like a kid in a candy store… if the kid were a 34-year-old-woman and instead of candy there were herbs, oils, clays and every other gorgeous ingredient you’d need to make your own skin care goodies, teas and more. There were shelves full of empty brown glass tincture bottles and large mason jars calling, “What might you fill us with?” And there were just too many answers.

I left with a number of things, including a recipe book for herbal teas, and I’ve been experimenting with beverage brews – hot and cold – ever since. Here are a few of my favourites (minor variations on recipes from Kathleen Brown’s book Herbal Teas).

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