The Leafy Cauldron

Fun and Fresh Food

Indian Spiced Pickled Garlic Scapes

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Signing up for a CSA box has made my summer so much better than usual. I love the weekly inspiration and impetus to do more. My bits of free time are precious and cooking makes me feel like myself. Leading up to giving birth, I had a lot of anxiety about losing interest in my passion and therefore my identity. Parenthood is all consuming and certainly world-shifting, but with care and support, you can still be who you are! Don’t get me wrong, I like to read about car seat safety as much as the next person, but I also have a firey intense need to get my hands dirty in the kitchen! Inspired by Sandor Katz and The Art of Fermentation, I try to have something fermenting somewhere in my apartment at all times. I try to bake once a month. I make a new recipe at least once a week. And I continue to occasionally pickle in vinegar, which brings us back around to my CSA box! The perfect opportunity to preserve the best that Ontario’s summer has to offer, really. That also means my sweet baby gets to try all that our farm has to offer and that makes me incredibly happy.

Garlic scapes are a mild, vegetal, and bright part of the garlic plant that comes up in late spring here (far right of the above picture). You can use them anywhere you use garlic. I had more than I knew what to do with, so I made a litre of fridge pickles. One jar for us, one jar for a friend; which is a pretty strict policy of mine when it comes to preserving. I would use these pickles chopped up in sandwiches (like chickpea salad!), on top of dal and maybe even as a fun addition to a coriander chutney. They do take six weeks in the fridge, so sorry these are not exactly seasonal anymore, but I have very little time so this is as good as it’s going to get for now.

Indian Spiced Pickled Garlic Scapes
Makes two half litres (two pint jars)

~500 g scapes, cleaned up
1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar, or white wine vinegar
1 1/2 cups water
2 tablespoons kosher salt, or pickling salt
2 tablespoons jaggery, or granulated sugar
1 tablespoon nigella seeds
1 tablespoon brown mustard seeds
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1/2 tablespoon fenugreek seeds
10 – 12 curry leaves (optional)
~10 cm of ginger, peeled and diced
Green chilies, chopped and to taste

Clean and dry two pint jars. Divide the spices, curry leaves, ginger, and chilies evenly between the two jars. Coil the garlic scapes in the jars, packing as tightly as you possibly can. In a small pot, bring the vinegar, water, salt and jaggery just to a boil. Pour the vinegar mixture over the garlic scapes until they are covered. Depending how tightly you’ve packed the garlic scapes, you may have vinegar mixture leftover, which is fine. Label, screw lids on and tuck away into your fridge for six to eight weeks.

Notes: If you have access to fresh curry leaves, I urge you to take advantage! They add so much to tadkas. You can store them in the freezer. I’m actually growing two curryleaf plants this year; that’s how much I love them.

Some might say you should sterilize your jars before using them like this, but I really do follow the school of Sandor. Clean is good enough for me, though feel free to sterilize them if you’re more comfortable with that.

On Rejecting Diet Culture

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Sometimes it feels like I haven’t been clear enough about my position on diets because perhaps you’ve never wandered over to my accessibility tab. In case it’s not obvious, there is a trigger warning associated with this post regarding diets and disordered eating. My natural position has always been one of balance but I have gotten lost many times over the course of my life. I grew up being viciously belittled by my mother about my weight for as long as I can recall. I remember being seven, stepping up on the toilet seat to look at myself in the medicine cabinet mirror that swung forward and hating what I saw. I felt shame and terror and disgust at the sight of my body. Once I got to eighth grade, at the advice of a family friend, I started to only eat an apple a day, foregoing all other meals. Then I ate again and my metabolism went haywire. There were a couple diets my mother thought were good ideas to encourage teenaged me to try, like the cabbage soup diet. Your participation in diet culture allows abuse like this to continue. I stopped eating again when I moved to Montreal for lots of reasons; mainly control-related ones. Then my best friend died along with a whole slew of other terrible things and by the time I emerged from the extreme bereavement and trauma in my new stable life, I didn’t recognize my physical self. Six years later, sometimes I still don’t. I struggle. I feel guilt for carrying the (not so) new (anymore) fat. I feel still feel shame for “letting” it happen. I logically know I didn’t let anything happen; it’s what my body decided to do but the cacophony from the world around me is endless, screeching, irritating, and overwhelming. I ask that you please get off the merry-go-round of body shaming, self hatred, and fatphobia.

There is no such thing as sustainable weight loss. Why is there always a new fad diet that promises just that? You know that diet that you tried, lost weight and then gained it back (and then some) because you fell off the horse? You didn’t fail – it did. They all do. Just stop. Make a decision right now to stop participating in a multi-billion dollar industry that is designed to make a profit out of you hating yourself.

Can you imagine for one moment how much collective energy we’d have if we stopped devoting so much thought to making ourselves (and other people for goodness sake) smaller? What if we started caring about things that actually mattered and assigned value to ourselves based on qualities and actions that improve the world around us? Do you realize the negative effect you have on the world around you every time you mention your new weight loss plan?

Some of the strategies I have in place are to avoid magazines and bloggers that do not show a variety of body sizes in a positive manner, watching less TV and movies, and ignoring all diet talk. Fill up those spaces with people and ideas that reinforce your commitment to moderate life and a healthy relationship with food and movement.

Make a promise to feed yourself in a healthful manner and move your body in ways that feel good to you. Love yourself enough to keep that promise to yourself. I have to renew this promise every day.

Feeding a Baby is Fun

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This post is materializing because of a mishmash of several motivations: me itching to use my new Nikon, the fact that purees have been a tremendously fun thing for me, and a desire to get back into writing. Introducing my baby to as many flavours as possible before neophobia sets in is incredibly important to me.

We struggled for eleven brutal weeks to finally find our groove breastfeeding. While I’m beyond grateful that we finally got there, I’m also grateful we’re at the solid food stage, too. It’s been a true pleasure for me to share my love of fresh food with my son. We also have some concerns about the genetic factor in food allergies and early introduction is recommended now. Our allergist has had us introduce all the major allergens and A will go for a blood test later this week to see if anything comes up positive. Right after introducing solid food, he started getting hives to pretty much everything which was terribly confusing but hilariously it turned out to be his very sensitive skin reacting to the straps on his high chair. So far, it seems only that mango and peanuts are on the possible list. Even if they’re a positive, I think that’s manageable compared to Devon’s list of allergies.

Baby food doesn’t have to be bland! Here are some of the foods A is enjoying these days:

Baby peas with mint
Zucchini with basil
Parsnips with fennel seeds
Brussels sprouts with apple
Carrots with cilantro
Silken tofu with toasted oat bran
Apples, cranberries, and cinnamon
Green beans and chives
Mung and toor dal with cumin, coriander, and garam masala
Loquats
Curried Jamaican pumpkin, apple, and chickpeas
Broccoli and ginger
Cherimoya and honeydew melon
Leek, a bit of potato, and tarragon
Blackberry, blueberry, and mint

I steam some; others are raw. The texture is up to you and what you’re comfortable with and where your baby is at developmentally. (I am not a doctor etc etc etc Please don’t feed your baby solids until they are ready etc etc etc)

What’s Next?

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In the year and half I’ve been on hiatus, I’ve often thought about what blogging means to me. I’ve always found it a struggle to strike a balance between what I think is an appropriate tone for something as public as The Leafy Cauldron and who and how I really am – and most of all how I feel about food. The truth is, blogging gets on my nerves. Food trends and fad diets are disheartening, I think most vegan food is trash with no signs of improvement, marketing and playing the game to get online attention make me sick to my stomach. And not that I really know what I’m doing (seriously I have no technical understanding of photography and had basically intuited all aspects of the manual setting on my old Canon Rebel) but au courant food photography is overexposed and almost all looks the same. I have often slipped between using I and we, as way of diverting attention from myself. Mostly I’m stumbling on words to say I’ve found it difficult to feel like myself because I feel like I’m writing for a hypothetical audience rather than for myself and I didn’t want to appear to be throwing any shade in anyone’s direction with my constant frustration.

The Leafy Cauldron has brought me into contact with some tremendous people; my dear friend Siobhan from back when I slugging along on Tumblr and we were strictly a Harry Potter food blog and Janet from The Taste Space who reached out when Devon and I had just moved to Toronto. I am so grateful for the real human connections food makes us all every day. Yet, I slowed down and eventually stopped writing. I would never stop cooking – it is integral to my existence as a human being. Food is everything for me. It’s how I relieve stress, express my love and my creativity. In fact, after I stopped blogging I have honed my skills even further in the kitchen. I am more adept than I’ve ever been and that’s saying a lot for someone who has been endlessly cooking with love since they were eleven. I love food and I love sharing it with my whole heart so I want to do better.

A lot has changed since my last post, both personally and in the world around me. On a personal level, we (briefly) went through fertility treatments which (incredibly on the first shot) led to my son, Ambrose, being born in October of 2017. He is amazing. Parenting is incredible. I am filled with light and love. I am so excited to see who he grows up to be. I take my job seriously and I will do everything in my power to have him grow up to be a luminary human being who is empathetic, generous and careful. I know I don’t possess much power in this world (and it’s so, so, so hard not to be pessimistic) but I can preserve this bit of our lives and hope that it brings some joy to others. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve felt like less of a revolutionary (socio-anarchism anyone?) and have shifted my focus to bringing about positive change to my community. It works for me and helps keep my chin up in what feels like a world that is slightly out of control.

So, with my new camera in tow, I’m revving the engine and getting this thing going again! I thought perhaps I’d share a little of the fun baby food I’ve made for Ambrose, maybe a bit about the local farmer’s market I keep unsuccessfully trying to contribute positively to, and definitely some recipes!

Canadian Split Pea Soup

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canadian-pea-soup-1

La version française suit plus bas.

Infertility is hard and the world is scary, so let’s all make my absolute favourite soup. My husband’s allergies have been slowly becoming more clear, which means a lot more foods are on the table these days, including many wonderful pulses. The key to a really savoury, classic tasting vegan version of something that is simmered with pig’s feet is slowly caramelizing a bit of smoked tofu, cut in a very fine dice, a little reserved leek thrown in the pot at the last minute, and a good tasting stock. Everything else is business as usual for this comforting and filling soup. I used yellow split peas, as that is traditional, but I’ll tell you right now that green split peas taste just as good here, so whatever you have on hand is going to work just perfectly. I don’t think the potato is traditional and I’m not sure where I picked that up over the years of making this soup, but it is such a welcome addition, I can’t imagine not adding it.

pea-soup-vegetables pea-soup-herbs canadian-pea-soup-3Canadian Split Pea Soup
Serves 8
Prep Time:  20 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour and 20 minutes

2 cups yellow split peas, rinsed, picked over and soaked for 30 minutes
2 tablespoons coconut oil, or margarine or oil, divided
~100 g smoked tofu, minced
1 small yellow onion, peeled and minced
2 medium carrots, peeled and finely diced
3 ribs celery, leaves included, finely diced
2 leeks, cleaned well and sliced into thin half moons, reserve a handful for the last minute of simmering
2 red potatoes, peeled and finely diced
1 1/2 litres stock, vegetarian chicken or vegetable
1 1/2 litres water
1/2 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 bay leaves, preferably fresh
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried savoury

Rinse and pick over the split peas, removing any stones or weird peas. Place in a bowl and cover with cold water. Set aside. In a medium heavy-bottomed skillet, melt 1 tablespoon of the coconut oil over medium heat. Add the minced smoked tofu and onion, salt lightly and immediately reduce the heat to low. Stir every so often. Allow this to brown while you prepare the rest of the soup. It is done when it is deeply brown and begins to slightly foam, which will take a least half an hour. In a large pot over medium high heat, add the remaining tablespoon of coconut oil and let it melt. Add the carrots, celery, leeks and season with a bit of salt and pepper. Allow to start to sweat before adding the potatoes, stock and water. Drain and rinse the soaked split peas and add them to the pot. Season with 1/4 teaspoon of salt, black pepper, bay leaves, thyme and savoury. Bring to a boil, stirring every so often. Once the soup has come to a boil, reduce the heat to medium low and simmer for about an hour, or as long as it takes to soften the peas. Add the remaining handful of sliced leeks, taste for seasoning and adjust. You can blend the mixture, but I like the texture as it. Finally, add the browned smoked tofu and onions to the pot and serve hot with crusty bread or fresh biscuits.

Note: If you’re not so big on doing a tiny dice, you could grate or use a food processor on the carrots, celery and leek.

pea-soup-diced-veg pea-soup-smoked-tofu canadian-pea-soup-2Soupe au pois

Donne 8 portions
Temps de préparation: 20 minutes
Temps total: 1 heure 20 minutes

2 tasses de pois cassés jaunes, rincés, tries et trempés pour 30 minutes
2 c. à table d’huile de noix de coco, margarine ou huile
~100 g de tofu fumé, émincé
1 petit oignon jaune, pelé et émincé
2 carottes de taille moyenne, pelées et finement coupées en dés
3 branches de céleri, avec les feuilles, finement coupées en dés
2 poireaux, bien lavés et coupés en demi-lunes, en mettre de côté une poignée
2 pommes de terre rouges, pelées et finement coupées en dés
1 1/2 litres de bouillon, au poulet végétarien ou au légumes
1 1/2 litres d’eau
1/2 c. à thé de sel, plus au goût
1/2 c. à thé de poivre noir
2 feuilles de laurier, de préférence fraiches
1/2 c. à thé de thym séché
1/2 c. à thé de sarriette séchée

Rincer et trier les pois cassés en prenant soin de retirer les mauvais pois et autre détritus. Placer dans un bol, couvrir d’eau froide et mettre de côté. Dans une poêle à fond épais faire fondre sur feu moyen 1 cuillerée à table d’huile de noix de coco. Ajouter le tofu émincé et l’oignon, saler légèrement et réduire immédiatement le feu à doux. Remuer de temps en temps. Laisser dorer et préparer le reste de la soupe. Le tofu est prêt lorsqu’il est brun foncé et commence à mousser légèrement, ce qui devrait prendre au moins une demie heure. Dans une grande casserole sur feu moyen-élevé ajouter 1 cuillerée à table d’huile de noix de coco et laisser fondre. Ajouter carottes, céleri et poireaux et assaisonner de sel et de poivre. Faire suer avant d’ajouter les pommes de terre, le bouillon et l’eau. Égoutter et rincer les pois cassés et ajouter à la casserole. Assaisonner de sel, poivre noir, feuilles de laurier, thym et sarriette. Amener à ébullition en remuant de temps en temps. Réduire le feu à moyen-bas et faire mijoter environs une heure afin de ramollir les pois. Ajouter le poireau mis de côté, goûter et ajuster au besoin. Vous pouvez passer la soupe au mélangeur si vous préférez. Finalement, ajouter le tofu et les oignons à la casserole. Servir chaud avec du pain croûté ou des biscuits frais.

NB: Si vous préférez ne pas couper soigneusement les légumes en dés, vous pouvez râper les carottes, le céleri et les poireaux.