Fresh from the oven.

Dear Lucerne Foods;

I have been a loyal and satisfied customer of your products for over ten years. Over that time I have developed a particular fondness for your yogurt. When it comes to taste and consistency, your yogurt is far superior to any other brand and I consume it exclusively.

The other day I was sitting down to eat my lunch at work and glanced at the expiry date. I don't normally look at the expiry date since the yogurt in my fridge rarely lasts that long, but something disturbed me greatly. The expiry date printed on my yogurt read 'Au 21 2054'.

In my experience yogurt typically expires one month after purchase, indicating that the product is fresh and perishable. Yogurt that expires after forty five years is rather unappetizing. Furthermore, it calls into question the quality of ingredients and processes you are using. I am unsure if your product even qualifies as yogurt at this point since there is no way a milk culture could last that long.

I urge you to return to using milk instead of edible oil products in the manufacture of your yogurt or I shall be forced to begin consumption of a lesser brand of yogurt.

Sincerely;

Sean Carney

The worst time for your oven to die is when you are making cinnamon buns.

Seriously.  You sift flour, combine dry ingredients, slowly stir in wet ingredients, knead the dough, roll it out, start mixing the filling (which smells wonderful even before it enters the oven), spread the filling on the dough, roll it, cut it, place it in a pan, put the pan in the oven, and open the oven twenty minutes later to find essentially a slightly drier version (but not any warmer) of what you originally put in the oven.  No fair.  The feelings of disappointment are compounded by a sense of paranoia since you were originally making cinnamon buns as a good way to end a long stressful day.  Now you spend the night considering the possibility that even your kitchen appliances are out to get you.

But, that was last week and we have a new oven now.  Hopefully this one doesn't hate me.

Allow me to start as saying that this is the worst possible time to bring up this subject.  That having been said, lets ignore the snow and imagine things were a bit greener outdoors.

I have always hiking, canoeing, and generally being outside so it was natural curiosity that lead me to explore what edible plants there are in Manitoba.  I bought a field guide for edible and medicinal plants while at camp a few years ago and it has been a wonderful resource for learning the plants that can be eaten and plants to avoid.  At camp I always enjoyed pulling the leaves off of some random plant and eating them, much to the disgust of any campers in the area.

As I returned to the city I noticed many of the same plants when walking through the park.  I have yet to find blueberry patches like there are outside the city, but there are many edible greens and roots to be found in the parks around town.  Although I have never done this, I have always thought that it would be fun to cook up some of the plants I see around me everyday.

Anyway, today I saw a mini-documentary on foraging and it really made me wish it was any season other than winter so I could go out and collect some food.  It is basically a simple walk around Chicago with edible plants being identified.  Some of the plants shown are found in Winnipeg but others are not hardy enough although I have seen them outside of the prairies.  It would be nice if they provided more description of the plants, but you really should buy a field guide and study both the edible and the inedible (deadly) plants.

I have posted the video below the jump for your enjoyment.

It is rather scary, but I have the first of six chartered accountant exams coming up in just over three weeks.  The date seems to be looming closer and closer which means I need to start some intensive studying.  Yesterday, on my way home from work, I stopped at the tea shop to pick up the teas I'll be drinking while studying for my exam.

First of all, shopping for tea is one of life's great pleasures.  There are few places as inviting as a tea shop.  You come in from the cold into a warm, cozy and fragrant environment.  It is fun and relaxing to open up the various canisters of leaves and take a deep breath of what is inside.  Yesterday the lapsang suchong immediately caught my eye so I bought some.  I then asked the proprietor for a recommendation for a nutty flavoured tea, and was directed to a wonderful rum and marzipan tea.

For those of you who are not well educated in the British art of brewing tea, I suggest reading this guide from h2g2.  I try to follow the British rules and superstitions when brewing tea since they do make a difference in the end.

Tonight I chose the lapsang suchong and words cannot describe it.  The smell of this tea is therapeutic when you are stuck in the city and long to run into the woods screaming.  The tea has been dried over a pine wood fire so it has a strong smoky smell which brings to mind campfires and folk fest.  As the tea brews the entire apartment smells every so slightly of a campfire.  I pour myself a cup and impatiently wait for the tea to cool a bit.

When I try it, this cup of tea is among the best I have ever had.  The flavour is gentle but also subtly dark and mysterious.  The lack of any bitterness astounds me and I quickly finish the cup.  I remember why I like this tea so much - it really brings to mind so many happy memories.  While I may dread studying and exams, tea is a great comfort.

I have always enjoyed cooking. I may not be the best at it, but it is fun to at least try. It appears that some people do not just cook for taste, but they cook for revenge as well. The New Yorker has released a list of Fourteen Passive Agressive Appetizers which are wonderfully humourous, and the only thing they are missing is Mikael's moonshine.  (For those who don't know, Mikael's moonshine smells like baking cinnamon buns and tastes like bum because its main ingredients happen to be tea, sour milk, and yeast)

Take number four for example;

4. Blend fresh crabmeat with diced avocado, scallions, and a dollop of mayonnaise for a canapé topping so delicious that it will take your guests a full minute to realize that they’re eating it off dog biscuits. Once they catch on, act mortified and stammer that you must have “mixed up the boxes,” until everyone calms down. Then start crying because the biscuits remind you that today marks exactly eight weeks since you had to put down Buster, and you just miss him so much.

I have caused bleeding with my cooking in the past, but armed with this list I could take my cooking to a whole new level.  Who wants to attend my next dinner party?

... are not some of my more unique and failed creations.

Every now and then I like to read some food blogs where I pick up the odd cooking idea. Usually they remain as ideas and the only thing that reading the blogs accomplishes is just making me even more hungry.

The other day that changed for me. I found a link to the Six Most Terrifying Foods In The World, and I certainly wasn't hungry anymore. It is an entertaining list, the food ranges from "Eww..." to "That's just plain stupid..." but I do not recommend reading it immediately before or after you eat a meal.

I decided this year that I should cook myself a meal on Thursday nights. I am usually up well past midnight and because I eat a meal roughly every five hours in the day I thought it should help me to stay alert and not-hungry. When I was last in the supermarket a new product caught my eye, and I had to try it.

Kraft "Deluxe" macaroni may be advertised as the premium macaroni on the macaroni on the market but my experience proves differently. This appears to be the ugly cousin of Easy-Mac, probably the worst macaroni product to hit the shelves since... well... it's just the worst; we'll leave it at that.

The packaging looks impressive and the picture of the meal looks promising so for advertising they get an A+. There are instructions on the box for those who can't understand the concept of boiling water. I immediately threw out the instructions without looking at them and proceeded to prepare the pasta.

The noodles appeared to cook nicely but when they came out of the pot things changed. Many of the noodles were ripped to tiny shreds from cooking. Evidently these are some low quality noodles. The pasta gets a C.

The cheese sauce came in a foil package completely creeped me out. I'm not sure about you, but squeezing a foil package of cheese sauce simply feels wrong. There was something seriously gross about it. Determined not to let that get to me I emptied the sauce over the pasta and mixed it destroying even more shells in the process. The pasta's grade goes down to a D.

Now, for the tasting. Arguably this is the most important part. I lifted the fork to my mouth and cringed. Something was rotten in the state of Sean's mouth. Firstly, Velveeta is a crummy cheese to use on pasta, it should stay to being tiny cubes served on platters.

Secondly, the sauce tasted of preservatives more than cheese. It had this horrible chemical taste that makes an Army MRE seem healthy for you and prone to spoilage. The cheese gets a D.

But did it work. I am fairly certain that this meal helped me a bit. I did not experience severe hunger at 2 in the morning like usual, however the cheese sauce did bring on a feeling of malaise.

Overall I'd give this product a C. I am going to eat a can of chunky soup this week. At least I know it will be fairly good.

Today was the first day of true desperation. All the good food has been eaten so we had to get really creative for lunch. Upon opening the cupboard it appeared that there was hope, we had chunky, beans, and ramen. It was time for "Spring Staff Soup".

Hope was a poor choice of words.

Now it feels like there is a brick in my gut. "Spring Staff Soup" or "M&S Ultra Lunch" is probably the densest, most filling foodstuff ever created. This is a slight problem because in forty-five minutes I have to lead kids around the camp on foot for two and a half hours of orienteering. Right now all I can think of is hibernating for a few days while I devote all my energy to digestion.

I can now say that in the last twenty four hours the cooking of Mark and I has made one person bleed and convinced three people to curl up on their beds wishing they had skipped lunch. Wow, am I getting good or what?

- Never underestimate the quantity of meals that bacon can be served with
- Painting burlap is like nailing spam to the wall
- Ticks apparently are quite attracted to me
- There is a fine line between making syrup and making rock candy
- It is possible to draw blood with my cooking
- Pancakes taste great with icing
- Pancakes and rice were not made for each other
- Deer are scared of me, beavers are not