Wow People.. 28 days ago I started something a little on the crazy side, and, despite my bad habit of abandoning projects, am still going strong. In fact, this week may just be the best yet…
Since the last week in review I have managed to eat something leafy and green every day. Win! This was mostly bok choy or spinach, either in stir-fry or salad form… kind of boring. I also managed to make a tiny batch of edible lefse. I got new milk and started something else a little crazy..
I used to really enjoy a kale-spinach-fruit smoothies in the mornings, as it was a super easy way to incorporate fresh (and raw) leafy greens into my daily diet. Lately though, there have been no smoothies. My schedule has fallen into a blissful Monday through Friday and either 6am-1pm or 8am-2pm kind of deal. Don’t get me wrong: I love it, and will very, very, greatly miss it when the theatre things rolls around again (in two short weeks: eep!). Problem is: I have roomies. Ones that, I’m sure, would not appreciate the blender running at 4:45am, or even at 7am. Easy solution: use the blender at work! This next week I will be making some smoothie packs to bring to work: all of the ingredients ready to go (chopped, mixed and frozen) so alls I have to do is chuck them in the blender and add a little water.
This week had a few yummy meals. Chicken parmesan, chicken wings, stir fry, meatballs, and one lazy lazy day where no dinner was cooked (I have a semi-valid excuse for this one though…more later).
I also attempted to bake twice, and failed, saw a garden, got some milk, and did something that right now has me a little twitchy.
LEFSE:
Thursday night I attempted the Lefse, a Norwegian flatbread made with potato (basically it looks like a tortilla, but because the Norwegians are a brilliant people they found a way to add the yummy potato and make it even more yummy) which is spelled “l-e-f-s-e” not “”l-e-f-s-a” although it is pronounced “Lefsaaaaaaaaaa”, unless you have attempted to make it at home, with a recipe that wasn’t quite right, in which case you pronounce it “F%@!&@$@ Lefsa!” while tossing half of the recipe into the garbage.
If you haven’t gathered yet, this didn’t quite go well.
I got the lefse recipe from my Grandma, who makes it wonderfully and usually I get a pack or two a year. It went a little something like this:
-Make a medium sized pot of mashed potatoes
-Add some butter and salt
-Mix in flour until it turns into a dough
-Roll it out into circles on a floured surface
-Fry in an ungreased pan until brown spots appear
Please note the complete absence of measurements (I guess this is where I get it from..).
Also note the lack of cream (which my Mom found on a bunch of lefse recipes while talking me through my angry mixing of dough phase that came later on).
Last, but not least.. ohhhhhhh…. definitely not least, note the complete lack of the direction: cool your potatoes completely until stiff before adding the flour. DO NOT ADD THE FLOUR WHILE THE POTATOES ARE STILL WARM. EVER. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.
As this last missed direction was, well, missing, I started adding flour after mashing my potatoes. Then I added more flour, and another cup, and some more flour. I noticed that my mixture was not really turning into a nice workable dough, more like a chunky paste. I was on the phone with my poor Mom at the time, so she got to hear my colourful language at this point, as well as some interesting descriptions, and my complete joy at the fact the my Grandma had forgot to mention this one little step of cooling the potatoes. All in all my potatoes ate 6 cups of flour before my mom suggested I chuck out half my recipe and go from there. At this point it was looking and smelling like a really bad batch of home-made play dough. The halved recipe ate about another two cups during the rolling process.
The bottom is the abandoned half, the top was what I tried to save..
After I rolled out about 18 or so lefse I started the frying process. The little potato tortillas of death started doing something strange. When I put them on the hot pan they stared doing this weird thing where they would grow giant bubbly tumours, then the bubbles would move around and expand until they sprung a leak and a geyser of steam would rush out. I think it was due to the extreme amounts of flour that had been incorporated.. the mix had become almost elastic when raw. Whatever it was, it was weird, kind of creepy, and nothing that food should be doing.When taken off the pan though, they actually looked like lefse.
After cooking a few I decided to try it.. I smothered one in butter and rolled it up (it was like a butter filled potato taquito from Norway): not too too bad. In fact, it even tasted like lefse!! The night was finally looking up!
(By the way: this is what I look like tired, after being really grumpy about things not working, in my PJs and stuffing my face with butter soaked lefse)
I got half way through frying my pre-rolled stack when something happened. I guess my dough could have used some more flour (greedy, greedy dough), because suddenly halfway through the stack I went to pick up my next little round, and they all were stuck together. They were stuck together to the point that no matter how carefully I tried, they were not un-stickable.
Imagine if you were to take a stack of potentially yummy pancakes. Now separate the stack and add super glue to the top and bottom of each pancake and reassemble your stack. Now, take a can of varnish, a large can of varnish (yes the whole thing), and pour it over your pancake stack, making sure to completely cover all of your pancake stack. Put the varnish-covered super-glued delicious looking pancake stack somewhere well ventilated and wait 12-24 hours. Then go back, and try to separate those pancakes. That’s where I was at with my lefse at ohhh… about 10:30 Thursday night. Please note that I had put the potatoes on to boil probably around 6:30pm, spent about 2 and a bit hours trying to make a dough out of the stuff, and spent what felt like forever rolling out this precious little stack.
The last face the lost lefse saw
“Then I did something that I almost never do when baking or cooking. I gave up. I threw the half stack of stuck into the garbage (along with the failed half of my original amount). I did learn a couple of things however:
1) When making lefse, chill your f^(#ing potatoes until they’re stiff.
2) It never hurts to look at more than one recipe when trying something new.
GRANOLA BARS:
Friday I felt like I had to redeem myself a little, so I decided to make granola bars because really, how can that go wrong? I mixed up some oats with some melted butter, trail mix, holy crap cereal, coconut and whatever else granola bar additive yummy stuff I could find as well as some sweetened condensed milk.
I like my granola bars chewy, so baked them for about 20 minutes until the edges just started to brown. I pulled them out and turned the pan upside down onto the cooling rack where the whole tray crumbled and fell apart.
I tried to fix this by squashing it all back into the pan and baking it longer. Please note that this doesn’t work. They will kind of stick together, but will still be super crumbly and will fall apart when touched and not be chewy at all. Basically you will end up with slightly bar shaped logs of something that simply turns into crunchy granola when touched. Maybe this is what you’re looking for, in which case, leave a comment and I will tell you how to screw up granola bars.
THE GARDEN:
On a much happier note, I also took a peek at a garden yesterday!!
A while ago I had emailed a woman about taking on a plot in a community garden near my house. Last week she got back to me and explained that she had a wait list of 100 names, and had stopped adding names after that. She suggested I try again late in the spring. Community gardens are a great idea, they use space in unused lots, parks, boulevards for food, flowers or whatever else those people who are lucky enough to have them wish to grow. Usually though the plots are fairly small, very open, very close to the next persons plot and cost about $15.oo a year (which really isn’t a lot).
I was a little bit down about not getting this little patch of Earth, and was telling T about it. While I was being grumpy, he did something wonderful. He looked up a yaardshare program, found one near my house, and even made contact with the woman. Thank you thank you thank you!
As last week was a bit of a weather nightmare in the lower mainland, I waited until yesterday to walk by and take a peek at the space.
I am excited! The woman had mentioned that she doesn’t allow the use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers (Win!). There are a couple of girls who used the garden last year who might come back, but there is lots of space for everyone, and it also means that we can take turns watering, as well as share whatever we grow (Win!). There is an odd-looking, but neat pyramid structure for peas and climbing beans, and a small raspberry patch (Win!). She even has a kiwi plant growing! (exciting win!).
I didn’t take any photos yesterday, because, well, I had kind of snuck into the backyard (she did say to come by whenever), and it does need a little work. There is a lot of weeding, soil turning and things that have to happen before anything can be planted. Parsley has more or less taken over one large patch, and there is a fair bit of hay covering another patch. You may think this would deter me a little, but pretty much the opposite. I can’t wait to get in there and dig stuff up. If it weren’t so cold and wet out there I might even be doing that right now. In honesty, it will have to wait a few weeks, but it is something that I look forward to!
MILK:
I got new milk this week, and haven’t died. Yay!
A GRUMPY NEW UNDERTAKING:
Something odd happened yesterday. I got back from the garden and doing a little grocery shopping, had just made some granola crumbly stuff and was outside on the fire escape smoking the last smoke out of my pack. I was thinking to myself “probably should have picked up another pack when I got the groceries. Too bad. I really don’t want to go out again”.
That thought morphed into “I don’t have to go out again. I wonder how long I could go without a smoke”.
A couple of miles down the track and the thought train was speeding along from “Well, I’m two hours in, I think I could do this” to “I must have at least one cigarette in this house somewhere” and back to “three hours.. three hours thirty seconds…”
I have looked up some cheesy videos made with the idea that they will help you appreciate the decision to not smoke. They are cheesy little attempted pats on the back that one minute feel like they are helping a little, and the next make me want to punch the guy who made them because there is no way that he can know what this feels like, then I feel guilty for wanting to punch him because he is, after all just trying to help, and probably made the videos because he himself had trouble quitting and really does know the weird half there state my brain is currently in. I have also downloaded this annoying counter thing that tells me how long it has been since my last smoke, how much money I have saved by not smoking, how many cigarettes I would have smoked in the time since I have quit (though this is flawed because it averages them out over the day, not the hours that I am awake), and how much time I have added to my lifespan since stopping. I love and hate this thing alternatively. I like knowing how much money I have saved, how much longer I am apparently going to live, and how many less cigarette buts there are in the world, but the clock is driving me nuts. It even counts seconds (though isn’t quite accurate because I found it two and a bit hours after stopping and guessed the exact time I took my last puff).
As I type this it has been 22hr., 3min, and 28 seconds (29, 30, 31….)
I have saved $5.85
I have not smoked 13 cigarettes (reminder: flawed because of the all day average thing)
I will live 1 hour, 5 minutes longer.
Also, Ihave about half the brain capacity that I had yesterday morning when I was still smoking. I have managed to misplace two of my bowls (probably containing some sort of life saving snack), I can’t stop wiggling my toes, have an attention span of about 7 minutes and I am sooo grateful that I can keep my fingers busy typing this blog entry (which currently sits at 2,411 words).
Thank you for putting up with this massive post, as well as the mood swings, which I am sure are apparent in this monster of a post. Thank you also for continuing to read (or scan, sorry guys, I know this is a long one), and for taking the time to think a little bit about what it is you are putting into your mouth (or not putting in your mouth, as the case may be).
Keep on reading, let me know what you think!
USEFUL LINKS:
Yardshare: http://www.sharingbackyards.com/browse/Vancouver,BC&welcome_box=3
Lefse: http://visualrecipes.com/recipe-details/recipe_id/113/Lefse/
Non Smoking Stuff: http://ffn.yuku.com/topic/12886/Video-guide-for-those-just-starting-their-quits#.TyRc7YEtvaF
(the counter thingies are called “quit meters”)
P.S. : something increduble: I have ZERO things to add to the cheat list this week: WIN!
Eat Write Play 