Evergreen Cupcakes

John invited me to come to his final class women's studies class so that I could watch his presentation. I've joined him and his classmates after the class at the Grad Club a couple of times, and we went with them to the Santa Clause Parade, so I was looking forward to seeing them. I decided to make some cupcakes to bring to the class.



















Red velvet cupcakes seemed Christmasy (and it's my favorite kind of cake). But we're out of red food coloring, and my car was trapped in an ice cave, so I had to use what I had. And what I had was green.


















Last year when I was in a similar situation, I used blue dye and called them Blue Jean Cupcakes (in keeping with the fabric theme). This year, I wasn't sure what to call them...Elf Knicker cupcakes? Green Velvet (I'm guessing that's what elf pants are made of)? It looked more like a mossy green than anything, so I called them Evergreen Cupcakes, since that sounds more appetizing than "moss cakes."

The cancellation for Wednesday's class came in while I was making the icing for these cakes. I decided to finish the job and just bring them to a Christmas dinner party we went to for John's anthropology class on Thursday.










Well, yeah, I ate one. To make sure they aren't poison ivy! Ha! Get it? Poison ivy? They're gre- oh, nevermind.








The recipe is the same one from the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book I've linked to before. Here it is again. They're delicious!

Snow Squalls

I have a lot of other stuff I'd like to blog about soon, but I want to preempt it with a post about how it's been SNOWING SO INCREDIBLY HARD FOR THREE STRAIGHT DAYS!!!!!!!!

It began on Sunday afternoon:



I even went out on the porch to take this picture. We had to let the porch go when the snow invaded.












It snowed all day and night on Monday.



















And then all day on Tuesday, and through the night.




























We can only open the back door a few inches.


























I took this next picture at the top of the hill that our campus gym is built into. As we walked to the bus stop on Monday I said to John that I thought school should have been canceled, and that maybe it still would be. Traffic was crawling a long (the City of London doesn't plow as early as I ever expect them to), and then I said to John that I wondered if the buses would stop running, leaving us stuck at school.


























Naturally, that is what happened. They didn't stop running right away, but they were so off schedule that we figured we'd have to wait an hour outside for a bus to show up, and by that time we could just walk home. For some reason we tried to take the stairs up the rec center hill, but at the top, everything was covered in snow and we weren't sure how to get around the building. I think we were hiking through some landscaping, and the snow was already past my knees (because of a drift, I think). We stopped by the shopping center near our house and got some last minute groceries before making it home.

UWO said they would announce by 6 AM Tuesday whether we were having school, and sure enough it was canceled.


























We've been taking turns shoveling the driveway with the people who live downstairs.



















In some places (especially where we've tossed the snow as we shovel it) the snow is 2-3 feet deep. It makes an excellent chair!








Victoria Park, covered in snow.












This is much worse snow than we had all last year, especially since it came all at once. Someone else in town said this is the worst snow storm of the last 10 years. Our street wasn't plowed until Tuesday night at 11 PM, so I was glad we didn't have a reason to drive anywhere.

Western called off school for Wednesday by Tuesday afternoon, even though it wasn't supposed to snow as much on Wednesday. London Transit announced it would be shut down on Wednesday, and that makes it really hard for the school to stay open. So we had a third snow day in a row.


























On Wednesday the sun finally came out, though the temperature stayed quite low. John and I ventured out for a brief grocery store trip, and a walk in Victoria Park.






Snow (ski) pants my mom got me when I was at Interlochen - they still fit! Score!











All the Christmas decor is up in the park, including this family of snow people, getting ready to ice skate (their skate are hidden in the snow).

















































Note my camera strap, bottom right. Mittens make it hard to take pictures.




















The Nativity, as if it took place in Ontario.


Wednesday night the forecast calls for more snow, and then everything from light flurries to light snow through the rest of the week. I'll have some more posts about how we've survived during The Hibernation and, of course, more snow pics as Snowpocalypse 2010 continues.

Poached Pear and Goat Cheese Tart

John and I bought some frozen puff pastry dough this week, thinking we would try to do a dry run of Christmas dinner. But then we kind of lost our umph, and I saw a recipe for this tart one of my favorite blogs. Like a lot of things I try, this didn't seem to go as planned at first. I don't have a tart pan, and I wasn't planning on using the walnut crust that he suggested (though it sounds really good). I was a little nervous that this tart would just be a complete, doughy mess and that we would eat it out of bowls, but it was great!


















Poaching the pears in sugar, water, and wine was sort of fun. It reminded me of poaching pears for a salad at the Viking Cooking School class we took with John's mom a couple years ago.























With a little forethought, I probably would have had a side salad with this, with roasted walnuts or something. But this was kind of a "hey, we could make THIS tonight!" decision. The recipe calls for two cups of wine, and that left us each with a glass.























Instead of running all over the pan in a mess, the sauce sat nicely on top the pears. I raised the edges of the puff pastry slightly, and made a little wall out of pairs around the perimeter. It would present nicer in a circular tart pan but I feel like it looked alright, considering.

Good Lord, this was delicious. John commented that you could really taste each individual food - the pears, the buttery pastry, the white wine and goat cheese.
Still, it was actually way too rich for dinner, but you know, we suffered through. I'd recommend cutting the puff pastry and making little individual servings as an appetizer. I feel like it there would be a few different options, depending on your preference. We may try something similar with a mixture of sauteed mushrooms, olives, and more goat cheese as a filling for the other puff pastry sheet (but we may wait until we're with family for the holidays to try that, so that we have people to share it with). As a main course, it was pretty heavy. But it would be great as an hors d'oeuvre or a side.


Poached Pear and Goat Cheese Tart
adapted from Closet Cooking

Ingredients:
2 pears (peeled and cut in half and cored)
2 cups sugar
2 cups white wine
1 cup water
4 black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
4 ounces goat cheese (room temperature)
1/2 cup sour cream
1 1/2 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon thyme (chopped) (I used dried)
1 large egg yolk
1 sheet of puff pastry, thawed and unrolled into a rectangle

Directions:
1. Place the pears in a large sauce pan with cut side down followed by the sugar, wine, water, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer covered until the pears are fork-tender, about 10-30 minutes (the simmer time varies depending on how ripe the pears are).
2. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature in the liquid (of course I got impatient and let them finish cooling on the cutting board).
3. Slice the pears thinly.
4. Mix the goat cheese, sour cream, honey, thyme and egg yolk inf a food processor until smooth.
5. Spread the filling out over the puff pastry and top with the sliced pears, in any arrangement that pleases you.*
6. Bake in a preheated 350F oven until the filling is set, about 20 minutes.**

*This is where I built a little wall of pears around the perimeter of the dough. You could get by without doing this, but it did seem to help keep things in place. **I initially tried 15 minutes, and then added at least 5-6 more minutes to let the crust finish cooking. This time will vary a lot depending on your oven.

Transformation

Just in case you forgot what our backyard looked like in October, here's a refresher:


































Yesterday we had some "snow squalls." More are in the forecast for Sunday. Here's what it looks like now:

































Winter is here!

American Thanksgiving, 2010

Naturally, John and I don't get a day off for American Thanksgiving. Since I'm doing an independent study this semester, I can feel like I have a "day off" any time I want, except that then I would feel really guilty and behind my imaginary deadline. This year, we marked the American version of Thanksgiving by staying at home to work on papers and cook fairly normal, American Thanksgiving fare.

Since John and I don't really buy meat in Canada (because of the expense), we went with a meatless Thanksgiving and ended up using a few different vegan recipes from this website, which I love. The author over there had a couple different tofu preparations that looked delicious, and I ended up choosing the one I did because it involved making gravy, that was too goo to pass up.

So here are the things I made, some of which were for that day in particular, and some for other occasions.

Pumpkin Chocolate Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World.





Delicious.












Those were meant to be dessert after the holiday meal, and I think I'm the only one who had any room left to eat them. Also, they're great heated up in the microwave the next day.


Molasses Spice Cookies, from America's Test Kitchen Family Cook Book.



















Don't believe the recipe when it says this makes 2 dozen cookies - it made more than 2 and a half, and they weren't small, neither. I gave half of it to a local holiday bake sale and brought the other half for my students on Black Friday. One of my colleagues said these are better than the same cookie at Starbucks. Ahem.

Then we set the table and our friend Gwen came over for dinner.

















With just three people to feed, I tried not to let the menu planning get out of control (as I'm wont to do). We had three dishes, gravy, and the cupcakes. It was kind of perfect because I stuffed my face (especially with potatoes) but I didn't eat my weight in three kinds of potatoes.




















Here's what we served:

• Steamed green beans, with margarine, sea salt and pepper
• Crash Hot Potatoes (I could eat these every. day.)
• Pan-Fried Tofu with Mushroom Gravy, from fatfreevegan.com.
  

It was sort of hard to explain the tofu recipe to John until I made an analogy to chicken-fried steak. Then he was on board. This was a delicious recipe, and it reheats in the oven well. The breading is delicate, since it's just flour and some herbs. Our guest (who told me in advance that she would try anything once) said if I hadn't told her ahead of time, she would have thought it was chicken. The chicken seasoning is a pretty crucial ingredient for making it so good. I seriously couldn't wait to have this again the next night.

As for the gravy, our guest also told us that mushrooms are the one food she absolutely abhors, so we left them out of the gravy. Still, it was delicious and came together easily. I think if you added some finely chopped and sauteed celery, and maybe some bread cubes, it would taste just like regular stuffing. The mushrooms would make it even better and I hope we try that again. John and I were putting the gravy on everything on the plate by the end of the meal. I was concerned that it all might taste overly like soy, but it didn't at all.

I have no illusions that what we ate was "healthy" just because it was vegan. Fried and breaded tofu may not have have as much fat as similarly prepared beef, but it's still high in fat. I just figured it was a cheaper (and just slightly healthier) thing to eat in place of making a turkey or buying a cut of meat. This meal was a good example of how vegan cooking can still be somewhat indulgent and super flavorful when you want to splurge on the calories a little. We won't make it again right away, since you know, it's fatty and for a special occasion, but we will definitely make this tofu again.

I know I'm late, but I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, whenever you might have celebrated it!

Bathroom Decor

I've been on a house cleaning...thing. I'm doing what John taught me that his mother taught him:

The 30-Minute Clean.


So far I've cleaned out and organized more things than I've actually made things less dirty. The coat closet, the linen closet(s), the kitchen cabinets, and basically all the general clutter in our apartment has seen a real shake down. I just set the microwave timer for 30 minutes, and when it's done, I go back to studying.

When I cleaned off our bathroom shelves, I decided that I wanted to have something festive to put on them. I posted a couple of these photos on Facebook and asked the Internet to give me some suggestions.











































The Internet (and by that I mostly mean, Kira) responded with suggestions for things like:
- a basket of towels and small soaps for guests.
- a small candle, but probably not because the shelf is too low and it will create some soot.
- a flameless candle or some pretty, smelly beads that work like an air freshener.
- a diffuser (the thing with the sticks).


And here's what I ended up doing (so far anyways).






Ta-da!









Nothing schmancy, but it's an improvement. The top shelf will probably still have some tissues and extra toilet paper on it. Below, you can see I kept a bottle of lotion, and added the basket of towels (basket from Micheal's, 2 Roots wash clothes that were 50% off at Sear's), plus some ginger-scented shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and hand soap from Bath and Body Works (left over from a hotel stay...yes, we are those people).

Here's a close up of the green thing there:















It's a little container of fragrance beads from Pier 1 (the link is for a non-Christmas version). The tin pattern on top is pretty festive (one of my requirements for my "ask-the-internet" post on Facebook), though I wish it looked a little nicer when I opened it to let the fragrance out.

Here's a shot of the beads. They look a little like giant caviar. But they smell, well, like an enchanted forest! Just like they promised!

























At $8 (or $5 in the U.S., I think), they last for 2 months, they don't blacken the shelf above them or require matches, and they are a lot cheaper than a $30 flameless candle.* I think I may try out a diffuser at some point, but honestly, I cleared that shelf off because I was afraid of knocking the case for my night guard into the toilet. I feel like if there was a delicate vase of smelly sticks on that shelf, it would only be a matter of time until they accidentally fell.

So that's that! Our bathroom seems a little cleaner and less cluttered. Our guests can use the toiletries, should they need them, and the place smells like fresh pine. I basically consider it a success.

Thanks to the following folks for suggesting things to put on that shelf:
Kira
Natalie
Erik Jorgen
Molly
Kei
Aunt Becky

I'm glad to know that they are there when I need to call upon the wisdom of the Internet.
*Just for the record: not that I'm some well known blogger, but I'm writing about this product of my own free will. Pier 1 has no knowledge of my blog and didn't send them to me. But I wouldn't mind if they did, because I would probably buy a different scent in the future.

London Santa Parade 2010

A couple weeks ago John and I went to the Santa Parade, a tradition in London and other Ontario towns that starts off the holiday season. I've wondered what sort of officially starts Christmas in Canada, since Thanksgiving is before Halloween. Some people say Remembrance Day, others say American Thanksgiving, others say December 1st. But quite a few people told me that it was the Santa Parade.



We clapped for these guys for real, after last year when our apartment almost set on fire.












It had your typical small town parade stuff: local fire department, radio stations, and London Dance Extreme had floats or groups in the parade.








I think this should have won "Most Entertaining."











They had a pretty cool train...





















and the Ghostmobile! Decked out for Christmas, of course.



















They had a local high school drum line and a couple other marching bands.







Note the lights around their rims.












After a half hour or so we felt like maybe we'd seen enough. But then the Big Guy in Red showed up.



















As I said on Facebook, I guess Santa makes a pre-Christmas swing through Ontario, maybe to help us remember that it's almost Christmas.



















There's John screaming, "SANTA! LOOK AT ME, SANTA! LOOK AT ME!!!!"


Here's a group photo of everyone who we went with to the parade. They're all friends of John's (and friends of theirs) from his women's studies class. Afterward we went back to the house of the girl who took the picture and watched Home Alone 2.



















This is probably the first Christmas post of many. Yay for Christmas!