The Pear Tree

Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

It’s so easy to find fault with January. The snow is not so pretty now (if you have it at all- we don’t). All is bare and the biting air is far from inviting.

But there’s an upside: Roaring fires, cozy sweaters and comfort food. When could we ever enjoy these things if the weather was always fine?

Not convinced? Try a cup of this Bergamot hot chocolate. It’s so soulfully rich and and creamy you might want winter to last a little longer. You’ll certainly want to postpone bathing suit season if you consume enough of it!

Bergamot Hot Chocolate

1 cup milk

1/4 cup cream

1 Earl Grey tea bag (we used a spoonful of Wittard’s loose tea in a Finum tea filter)

2 oz bittersweet chocolate, cut up

Whipped cream

1. Place milk and 1/4 cup cream into a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

2. Remove from heat and add tea. Steep for several minutes then remove tea bag and bring to a boil again.

3. Add chocolate, mixing with a wire whisk, and remove from heat.

4. Pour into a small mug and finish with a dollop of whipped cream and a pinch of cinnamon.

Then find a good book, a soft throw and a view of the icy outdoors. And smile, because you just got one up on winter.

- Words and photos by Lori-Anne Poirier

I’ve never left cookies out for Santa Claus. My mum had a hard enough time keeping them in the cookie jar when my brother and sister and I were growing up, never mind out overnight on a plate.

I’d like to say that if I was going to leave the jolly old elf a midnight snack all these years later, that the chocolate gingerbread cookies pictured above would be my treat of choice. They certainly would make a nice bribe if you’re after a big diamond ring or (faux) fur coat. But given the ridiculous number of cookies he’s got to chomp his way through Christmas Eve, I wouldn’t waste this delectable indulgence on Santa.

No, these are for late-night present wrappings with a cup of eggnog-laced coffee. Or an energy boost just prior to a morning of mall madness. They’re what gingerbread men aspire to become when they’re all grown up – although I discovered (much to my chagrin) that small kids will devour them and look around greedily for more as well.

Think moist, chewy gingerbread spiked with chocolate chunks and a sprinkling of frosty white sugar.

I think – although I’m not positive – that I found this recipe last year in Martha Stewart’s trove on her website, although I have made a couple of little changes along the way.

Last year was my first experience trying them. But something about these cookies tastes like I’ve been making – and eating – them forever, so timeless is their taste. While that might not be the case yet, looking forward to Christmas Future I’m pretty sure these cookies will be there!

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

7 oz semi-sweet chocolate

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

8 tbsp unsalted butter

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup molasses

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1. Chop chocolate into small chunks and set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cocoa.

3. Beat butter in an electric mixer until whitened (about 4 minutes) then add brown sugar and beat until combined. Add molasses and beat until combined.

4. In a small bowl, dissolve baking soda in 1 1/2 tsp boiling water.

5. Beat half of flour mixture into butter mixture. Beat in baking soda mixture, then remaining half of flour mixture. Mix in chocolate chunks.

6. Cover dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least two hours.

7. Heat oven to 325F. Pull off small pieces of dough and shape into 1 1/2″ balls. Roll in granulated sugar and place two inches apart on buttered baking sheet.

8. Bake 10-12 minutes, or until surface cracks slightly. Let cool five minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

In our mom’s mind, we didn’t get enough vitamins. Vitamins, minerals or roughage. She might have been right.

After all, my sister and I preferred our noodles with cream gravy instead of tomato sauce. Cream gravy and Roger’s syrup, if you must know. And if there was a food group we liked as well as fats and carbs, it was represented by Grandma Friesen’s homemade hamburgers, fried in glistening pools of sizzling fat. (We once squeezed a cooked patty between two napkins and could have used the napkins as a torch.)

To us, vegetables meant potatoes, also fried.

This dearth of leafy greens and phytochemicals, however, wasn’t as bad as all this may read.

In summer, the garden in our backyard meant never having to go inside for mid-day snacks. We’d simply pluck a carrot from the soil, wipe it off on our shorts, and munch away. No dressings or dips, no cheese sauce, required.

The same was true of young radishes, and raw corn-on-the-cob with its leaves and silks torn back. And peas sweeter than candy, their pods more fun to open than cellophane wrappers.

And although I never told Mom, I was sometimes known to scoot across the back alley, into the garden of a neighbour and, Peter Rabbit-like, thief a nice crisp kohlrabi, which I ate like an apple.

Sometimes I even took a bite of the acerbic little plums and apricots that grew along the edge of our garden. I needn’t have, though, because fruit from B.C. arrived by the truckload all season. Off-season, there were jarred peaches and cherries.

Summer, though, was also a time for popsicles, and as a family, we liked to make our own. Mom, because she could blend real fruit juice with other good-for-you ingredients, like bananas. Us, because these popsicles were always better than the coloured sugar water sold at the corner store.

Until, that is, wheat germ suddenly became vogue.

Already, we were a Shaklee family. Daily supplements of plant chalk made certain that we kids would not grow up with bowed legs or bleeding gums.

To this day I can still taste the insides of those bottles.

But then there was the wheat germ.

Not only did wheat germ, for a time, feature in every recipe for muffins or cookies, but it became such a holy grail/grain that it began to show up in the popsicles.

Naturally, the wheat germ sunk to the bottom of the moulds, settling into a half inch layer of fibre at the top of each treat.

Now, twenty five years later, I thought we’d all put the wheat germ behind us.

Until, that is, my sister sent me a “tweaked” recipe for carrot cake. A cake featuring, you guessed it, a stealthy scoopful of wheat germ.

Sure, it has more to hide behind in carrot cake than frozen juice. But as I see it, once you start down that road, there’s no telling how far it might go.

If my sister shows up with a bottle of Shaklee, though, I’m locking the front door.

Tropical Carrot Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ cup wheat germ

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

3 eggs

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

¾ cup vegetable oil

¾ cup buttermilk

2 tsp vanilla

14 oz can crushed pineapple

2 cups grated carrots

1 cup sweetened, shredded coconut

1 cup chopped walnuts

In a medium bowl, combine flour, wheat germ, soda, cinnamon and salt. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and mix in sugar, oil, buttermilk and vanilla. Combine wet and dry mixtures, then fold in pineapple, carrots, coconut and nuts. Pour into a greased 13x9x2 pan and bake at 350F for 55-60 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Mango Cream Cheese Frosting

16 oz soft cream cheese
10 tbs soft butter
4 tsp vanilla
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/2 cup mango puree
Cream together cream cheese, butter and vanilla. Gradually beat in sugar and mango until combined. Refrigerate to stiffen a little.

Mango Puree
1 ripe mango, peeled and cut into chunks (or frozen, thawed)
1 tbs sugar
1 tsp lime juice

Combine in a food processor until pureed.

- Words and photo by Darcie Hossack

I picked up a little bottle of pure lavender essential oil from the Okanagan Lavender Herb Farm, recently, for a project I want to try here on The Pear Tree. But before I got to it, I started to discover all these other things I could do with it – including adding it to a pitcher of lemonade for a wonderful, distinctive nuance.

I was planning on saving this idea for a sunny day – the kind of day that begs you to make lemonade with an extra twist of stringency just to make it through the afternoon. But I am becoming doubtful that we here in what used to be known as the “Sunny Okanagan” will ever enjoy such a day again. Surely not a whole week of them. But I digress. This is about the lemonade – lavender lemonade, which will surely taste just as superb hot, sipped on whilst wrapped in a flannel blanket on the patio with a pair of wool socks (here I go again!)…

The Lavender Herb Farm carries a number of lavender essential oils, all extracted from their own crop. But the sales lady that helped me recommended the Lavandula Angustifolia ‘Maillette’ as one that’s good to cook with (not all of them, I guess, are edible).

Stay tuned for the original project I had in mind. In the mean time, try this sweet recipe for lavender lemonade. I hope the weather where you are is more demanding of it than here!

Lavender Lemonade

3 1/4 Cups water

1/2 Cup ReaLemon Lemon Juice (or, if you’re more ambitious than me, the same amount of fresh squeezed lemon juice)

2-3 drops pure lavender essential oil

1/2 Cup granulated sugar (adjust to taste, since the lavender diminishes the sweet)

Whisk all ingredients together in a pitcher. Serve with ice and lemon and (if you have it) a sprig of organic lavender.

- Words and photos by Lori-Anne Poirier

A few years ago, I interviewed a wonderfully eccentric lady who ran a home decor shop downtown, for a story in a local newspaper. Apparently she liked the story, because she left for me at the front desk of the newspaper office a beautifully wrapped box of fine crystal glasses. When I went into her shop to thank her, she told me that they were Czechoslovakian crystal, and made me promise to use them for fun, not just for special occasions.

I will admit that I have not kept my promise so well in recent years – especially after adding two Littles to my home. I will also admit that my life is often a paradox to what The Pear Tree tries to promote – namely, fine living and an appreciation for beautiful and decadent things.

But while being practical is more often called for with small kids in tow, the spirit does need a little bit of indulgence now and again. Recently I gave into that need, took out a lace table cloth and set a dainty table for a teatime escape.

It was just Mr. Pear Tree and me, although I laid the table for four (and joked, part way through, that instead of refilling our teacups we could just slide over a place setting, like a Mad Hatter’s tea party).

I do think we need to treat ourselves more. To enjoy the myriad things we insist on stockpiling. To take them out and set them up, sometimes for no other reason than because it makes us feel good. I don’t know about you, but there are so many things I have – from china to dress clothes, that I unconsciously reserve for when I want to impress someone. And they hardly ever see the light of day.

But it is so fun to tinkle through the mismatched silver spoons in my spooner (left) and pick exactly the one that suits my mood in the moment. I’ve even caught supposedly jaded men taking a longer than expected peruse to find a spoon that speaks to them (although they’d never admit it).

And if I saved my rose petal jelly and lavender jelly from the Okanagan Lavender Herb Farm until the queen showed up, well, what fun would I ever have? Believe me, if you want to pacify the spirit every now and then, a bit of the above jelly on a dollop of Devon Cream (from Little Britain on Enterprise Way in Kelowna) on a fruit scone will just about do it. With or without the pretty plates (but why go half way?).

So here’s the recipe for the scones. Bake up a batch, round up some old china and treat yourself to a spread.

In the meantime, I’m going to go dig out those Czechoslovakian crystal glasses. Life is too short not to use crystal just because.

Cranberry Blueberry Scones

1 1/2 cups flour

1/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3 tbsp butter

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 cup blueberries

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl

Cut in butter

In a small bowl, combine buttermilk, egg and vanilla

Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients

Add berries

Place in mounds on a cookie sheet and bake at 400F for 15 minutes.

- Words and photos by Lori-Anne Poirier

Linking up with A Good Life Wednesdays over at A Beach Cottage.