The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

I started writing this post in April and it was pretty much complete without recipe and picture, but I never managed to get it published. Seeing as it’s so hard to complete a post these days I thought I would publish it anyway – the recipe is truly great. Having a baby who wont let you put him down (my fault I know – and we are working on that) really doesn’t’ leave much time for anything else. I am also happy to report that my vegetable garden did incredibly well despite all the rain this year and the fact that summer still really hasn’t arrived – hot summer that is. 

Spring has yet to really make it to Vancouver. For those of you not familiar with the climate here that means it has been raining or cloudy pretty much since October of last year, with an exception of a few days here and there. Depressing I know. I continue to hear that this must mean we will be having a really hot summer – a symptom of widespread desperation no doubt. I hate to be a pessimist but as far as consistent sunny weather goes this area of the world is not reliable and we are lucky to have a few months of sun before it starts all over again. In the past I have chosen to not let this bother me, I didn’t really have a choice. In fact, I generally embrace the rain and cloudiness. I grew up in this town after all, its a part of who I am and I can’t deny that.

This year is different. This year  after many years of pining, planning and envisioning I was finally able to realize a dream: my very own vegetable garden. A few weeks ago we moved into our new house a small apartment sized 100 year old East Van charmer. It’s perfect and felt like home immediately. More importantly it has two amazing vegetable beds, that were all ready for planting. I was so excited about this that I think we were in the house for only a few days before I planted every single vegetable that is known to thrive in the Pacific Northwest. No really, if everything goes my way I will be my own Farmers Market. For this to happen I need sun and lots of it. I can already see a few of my lettuce varieties starting to droop and I am really not impressed. I have high expectations for my garden, despite being a newcomer to gardening and the lousy weather.

I’m a huge fan of pizza dough. I make pizza dough as often as I can for one reason: it makes me feel like I can bake bread really really well. Its so simple to make and really hard to mess up at least as far as bread is concerned. It’s also extremely versatile – there are so many things you can do with it and after while it will really make you feel like you are quite the accomplished bread maker, or at least trick those less educated in the ways of bread making… it’s always fun to let people think you’re better at something than you actually are.

This is the most simple of pizza dough recipes, there’s absolutely nothing to it. If you bake it in a cast iron skillet its even better, the bottom totally crisps up and the way the dough absorbs the olive oil while cooking creates this amazing textured crust that is crisp and bubbly, almost like the bottom of a great deep dish pizza. This recipe is best eaten straight out of the oven mainly because it wont survive until dinner if you make it in advance. We had this on Sunday with Pancetta Mac and Cheese, it was a heat attack meal on all levels and it was amazing.

Well I’m officially back in my kitchen and couldn’t be happier about it. I really hope to forgo such long blogging breaks in the future. In my defence, it was however quite an unglamorous and difficult summer I endured, one where the maintenance a food blog proved impossible. They really don’t warn you about these things, or maybe they do and I just didn’t listen. Either way I hold myself accountable for thinking that the transition into such major change would be smooth, uncomplicated and altogether enjoying. As it stands all of those ideas of what I thought these months would bring couldn’t have been more off base. This was extremely frustrating at the time but of course now that I am on the other side I feel that it was all worth it.

What am I hinting at? Well after almost 4 miserable months we are officially delighted to tell you that in early March we are expecting a brand new addition to our family of 3 and we couldn’t be more excited and terrified about it. Excited for all of the obvious reasons and terrified because this will be our first non fur baby and we are starting to wake up to the responsibilities that that entails. But we are delighted by the challenges that it will bring and are in a bit of a panic searching for new digs that will accommodate our new addition.

I have been the laziest cook lately. For the last few weeks as this blog will attest I have had minimal time in the kitchen. Actually it hasn’t been intentional at all, I’ve just been so busy lately. We are desperately trying to find a house right now as we’ve out grown our one room apartment, so all of my free time has been spent doing this. Any of you Vancouverites who have been through this process recently will know how frustrating it is. I wont get started on the housing prices in Vancouver, they make me want to pull my hair out.

But hopefully we will find something soon because I’m sick of this and need more time to do the things I love again. AND my kitchen misses me. AND i just got a new set of amazing pots and pans. AND figs are in season!

I don’t know about you guys but I’m absolutely obsessed with figs. I wait not so patiently all year until its fig season. Once they start showing up we go absolutely fig crazy. Seriously we eat them on a daily basis. I thought I would share this extremely no brainer recipe quickly, its the first thing we do with figs each year and it may change the way you look at bruschetta forever.

Gougères come from the Burgundy region of France and are commonly served accompanying champagne. They are light savory pâte à choux cheese puffs and they are currently my favorite bite to serve dinner guests before a big meal.

I’m not a big Champagne drinker, though I’ll drink like I am one when it’s around. Why hold back when you can just go for it? I will say that several years ago, while still living in San Francisco I might have had a mini champagne (not the real stuff! ) drinking problem and would often find myself with a glass in hand on my balcony with certain enablers before noon most weekends. I was 25 and for us Canadians living in the US a $2 bottle of Champagne-like-stuff was as good as free. Do you have any idea how much booze is taxed in Canada? That same bottle would cost like $17 here. We had to get it while we could. Plus we needed all of the money we could to shop at this place aka heaven on earth.