quinoa salad with asparagus, corn, chicken, and goat cheese

Summer is here!

I could try to explain why I haven’t been here, in this space, but really there are no excuses. Life just interfered, once again.

I have a good feeling about this summer though. There’s a pile of cookbooks sitting on my bookshelf (thanks to a well-stocked local library) that have been really inspiring me lately. The arrival of the spring and early summer produce in my local grocery stores and markets has been tempting me back into the kitchen, after a winter spent braising and making countless vats of soup. One can only eat so many root vegetables before the very thought of a fresh salad, bursting with bright green flavours, becomes incredibly appealing! I’m also out of school for the summer, which means more time to mess around in the kitchen. Not to mention the presence of a second person in the kitchen – cooking with and for someone else is a vast improvement on my usual solo suppers.

Anyway, the idea is this – I’m just dying to get back into the kitchen!

cauliflower soup

Exhausted – that pretty well sums up how I’ve been feeling lately. This school term, like every term before it, has found me always madly trying to catch up, let alone stay ahead. That can be pretty frustrating, especially since I like to take my time when tackling assignments and projects. It does put things in perspective though – I’m really looking forward to going back to work in May. I’ve been taking some courses relevant to my job, so it should be even more rewarding this time around (I worked for the same employer through the fall term). Right now, I’m just trying to focus on the end goal.

So what do you do when everything is hanging in the balance? Well, I make soup. This week it was a creamy cauliflower soup that I chanced upon in Smitten Kitchen’s archives. It’s exactly what I was looking for – hearty and comforting, with the added bonus of being pretty darn healthy too. I like that in a soup. I bumped up the flavour a little bit from the original by adding more garlic, some chili-garlic sauce (I suspect a pinch or two of red pepper flakes would be work just as well) and some fresh rosemary I had in the fridge. These strong flavours were muted by the cauliflower, and the balance ended up being just right for my palate. I’ll be eating this soup for the next few days for lunch, accompanied by a simple salad or some bread. Perfect food for imperfect times.

a bit of context

I think it’s about time that I get around to introducing myself and at least try to explain how I got the crazy idea to start this “project.”

So, let’s start at the basics, shall we? I’m an environmental engineering student from Canada (for any Canadians reading who are curious about the specifics of my geography, I’m originally from New Brunswick and am now studying/living/working in Ontario). My interests vary from art to soccer to environmental issues to music. The least of these interests is probably math/engineering. I’m not entirely sure how I ended up where I am today, but so far so good.

One of my main interests has always been cooking and really just food in general. Since before I could even reach the stovetop all I have ever wanted to do was cook. I would beg my mother to let me help her make dinner. She’d let me drag a kitchen chair over to the counter so that I could watch her chop and stir and sear. While most of my elementary school classmates went home to watch cartoons, I preferred to spend my after-school TV time watching cooking shows. Back then, my favourite show was The Urban Peasant on CBC and I watched it religiously every day after school, sitting mesmerized, captivated by the colourful and exciting images on the screen. As soon as I learned how to write, I started to copy down the recipes from that show and would try to convince my parents to cook them. One of my favourite games was to pretend that I was a chef in a fancy restaurant, and I would spend hours agonizing over the perfect menu and preparing “delicacies” for my parents.

roasted mushroom risotto

It seems, at least outwardly, that I have abandoned this blog. I guess I have, in a way. The truth is though that I just haven’t been doing very much cooking since that first entry in October. Shortly after publishing it I started to have some problems with my landlord, whom I live with (in the same house). I won’t go into the bitter details, but suffice to say that a great deal of restrictions have been placed on my “privileges,” namely my use of the kitchen. As a result, I’ve been living mostly off of frozen and canned foods, supplemented by steamed and raw vegetables. This hasn’t exactly been great material for a food blog, so even though I wanted to keep going, I stopped short and decided to wait for the situation to change.

I did, however, manage to make one last “real” meal before the sanctions were imposed – a richly flavoured mushroom risotto. I think a lot of people are intimidated by risotto, especially new cooks. Until about a year ago, I was one of those people – I viewed risotto as a strictly “restaurant dish” that was much too finicky and complicated to try at home. Then I actually tried it. I soon realized how easy risotto can be to make and it’s been one of my favourite dinners ever since. Isn’t it funny how so many of the things that we build up in our heads as being too difficult are actually just things that we’re too scared to try?

apple squash soup

Sometimes I think that squash gets a bad rap. They are misunderstood and under-appreciated, but with their lopsided and twisted shapes, odd colouring, and thick skins is that really any surprise? Some people claim that squash is bland, while others insist that it is bitter.  Many say that they are too difficult to prepare or cook, and some don’t even know that they can be cooked at all, being familiar only with those pint-sized gourds often used as centerpieces.