All About My Flowering Almodovar Secret

I've been bingeing on Almodovar films. Claro.

I've watched:
Volver (The Return)
Atame! (Tie Me Up!/Tie Me Down!)
Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother)
and Mujeres al borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown)

These films have a casual, intimate quality that renders the high drama of the plots believable, despite the events or characters that strain the suspension of disbelief. It is like meeting a friend of a friend for the first time, and then spending the whole day with her and realizing when you get home that you really hope you can hang out with her again, because there is a lot of heart and fun mixed in with her brand of crazy.

Almodovar manages to capture female emotions in their full mercurial movement. He presents emotions always in the context that organically feeds them and lets them move the characters (and plot) along.

I love Almodovar's use of colour too - bright orangey reds of 1980s European plastics, turquoise tiles, yellow wallpaper; the sets are as juicy as the passions portrayed in the films. Food also shows up again and again - tomatoes and peppers, frying pans and blenders. Tomatoes may be the metaphors for hearts full to bursting, being methodically chopped up by women trying to keep things under control. And when they can't keep life under control, the women turn to sedatives of various kinds.

My sedatives happen to be the films themselves at the moment.

I'll leave you with a couple of lines spoken by the male-to-female transsexual character of Agrado in "All About My Mother". This line stopped me in my tracks and prompted the blog post:

Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, senora,
and one can’t be stingy with these things
because you are more authentic
the more you resemble
what you’ve dreamed of being.

Heart phone photo from Etsy seller domestikate.

Low Tech Home Ec

If you liked the Mabel Hyde Kittredge blog post
from March 10th, you will love this online library from Cornell University called HEARTH! It stands for Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition, History.

These amazing home economics texts from 1800 to 1999 can teach your children to sew or help you discover if your cocoa contains arsenic. They might also remind you how good you have it.

(Or when it comes to adulterated food, maybe not.)



Image from The home and its management: a handbook in homemaking, with three hundred inexpensive cooking receipts by Mabel Hyde Kittredge

Honey Cake II

This is not the season for honey cake.

Purim is coming up and that means different kinds of treats, but I just read a story called Honey Cake.

It describes the invasion of Denmark during WWII, from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy. It is, like honey cake, dense without being too heavy, and sweet. Denmark's king, if you'll recall, was a brave and honourable soul.

Naturally, when I read about food, I get the urge to eat it or cook it, and there is a recipe in the back which I can't wait to try.

Here is a review from Quill & Quire that I pretty much agree with.

Brownie Points Foodie Blog

"McAuliflower" is a visual artist, a foodie, and a blogger.

I'm about to add "Brownie Points" to my Cook/Eat blog links. I will probably never attempt any of her recipes, but she astounds me with this Rice-Krispie-based sweet sushi! Go look at her level of dedication!

Carrot Cake Reward (with rum-soaked apricots, hello!)

I worked on my application. Hurrah! (It's an application so I can goes to a school where they teaches people how to makes good writering.)
Now I can look forward to making this amazing-sounding Chocolate Carrot Cake tomorrow or Monday. It is from the Foodland Ontario website, to promote carrot consumption (among other vegetables). 1/16th of this cake will contain 28 grams of fat. I'm okay with that.

*photo of carrosts stolen from Foodland Ontario website (but it's okay, 'cause I bought Canadian carrots today)

Chocolate, not Politics

My cousin went to Israel recently and returned with some Elite chocolate-covered biscuits and some Mekupelet chocolate bars for me. Hurray for cousins!

Anyhow, I was particularly cheered by the Mekupelet chocolate bars. (Mekupelet means "folded" in Hebrew.) I hadn't had them for years (even though you can buy mini-versions here) and I wondered how they would stand up to their ubiquitous twin, the Cadbury flake. I naively thought they were the same bar, just licensed by Cadbury or something. Anyhow, I am not the only one to ponder such things, because blogger Marcos Kirsch has an entire play-by-play adjudicated comparison.

It is hilarious (especially if you are familiar with both bars):

A small crumble bounced into my eye causing temporary discomfort. I bet you’ve never had chocolate in your eye and I don’t care if the Cadbury marketing drones spin this crumbliness as a good thing. It’s a freaking hazard.

בתיאבון (Bon appetit)!


I can't believe I didn't have a "chocolate" tag already!

One More Chanuka Post for the Night

I guess I'm just extra-festive this year. Maybe it was the glass of Folonari Valpolicella, or maybe I just love these litte gateaux so much, I had to share them with you:

Sandra Avital at Le Petrin made adorable star-shaped pear cakes. They sound much better in French, of course: petits gateaux etoiles aux poires. eyelid flutter

(Ok, so it's not exactly a Chanuka post, but she made beignets for Chanuka too, and the little cakes are Magen David-shape!)

Bon Appetit!

Chanuka - Delicious Any Way You Spell It

First night of Chanuka, and as my parental units did not want to worry about me driving in the GTA's current weather, I stayed home. We said the blessing over the lighting of the candles together over the phone. I also made lazy daisy latkes-from-a-box. (See little photo above?) Delicious!

As for explaining Chanuka, I'll let my copy of Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin take it away:

In 167 B.C.E., the Syrian emperor Antiochus set out to destroy Judaism by making its observance a capital offense... A Jew named Mattathias, along with his five sons, initiated a revolt against the Syrian monarch. Three years later, the rebels ousted Antiochus's troops from Palestine.

The Jewish revolutionaries, known as Maccabees or Hasmoneans, regained control of the Temple in Jerusalem, which during the years of Syrian control had been spiritually raped. Antiochus had even arranged for swine to be sacrificed in the Temple. The Jewish troops wept when the saw the Temple's degradation, and immediately resolved to restore it to a state of ritual purity. According to Jewish tradition, they could find only one cruse of uncontaminated olive oil; unfortunately, it contained oil sufficient for only one day. The Jews were very upset because it would take eight days to prepare ritually permitted oil. However, a miracle happened and the small quantity of oil continued to burn the full eight days.

Now we celebrate with fried foods, specifically latkes and soufganiot. Although, if you wanted to add churros and veggie dumplings and rosti to your tradition, I'd be the last to criticize.

Here's my gathering of Chanuka recipes. An unofficial carnival of sorts (since I can't find an actual Chanuka blog carnival to direct you to):


Food Touring from Austin shares Sweet Potato Curry Latkes

Marcy Goldman makes her own version of lazy daisy latkes using a mix & potatoes.

Bureka Boy didn't make latkes, he made Sephardi fritters called Bimuelos. I'm Sephardi and while I'm pretty sure I've eaten those, I've never heard them called bimuelos. Then again, my parents speak Judeo-Arabic, not Ladino. (And as a bonus, his preceding post has a madeleine recipe, which I've been looking for.)

Epicurious taps chef Paul Virant for a simple but good-lookin' latke recipe. The comments on that post are sweet too.

Happy Holidays! Eat! Eat!

The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair

Cows of all colours? Fowls of all feathers? Giant pumpkins and sheaves of wheat? Yes, yes, and yes! And don't forget the Horse Show and the Super Dogs!

The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair starts tomorrow and I'm excited!

I may go tomorrow if I feel like braving the weekend crowds, or I may go on a weekday evening.

What's the allure? Besides my delusion that I would have made a good pioneer or frontierswoman (blame Laura and Black Creek Pioneer Village), it's a good way to remember how much work goes into feeding you. (And who doesn't need to look at those furry Clydesdale hooves at least once a year?)

I keep one pair of "mucky boots" for just this occasion, as after a visit to the Fair, my boots smell like manure forever.

If you're in the area, you should go!

This post will be much much more convincing once I fill it with cow photos.

Honey Honey Cake Cake

It is 1:40am as I write, so I'll make this short and SWEET. I'll let you google all other Rosh Hashana info yourself. This blog post is hereby devoted to honey cake recipes:

Marcy Goldman's Moist and Majestic Honey Cake - the one I will probably get around to making with buckwheat honey - Smitten Kitchen bakes it here

Cookthink's recipe from 2007. She misses her grandma, I miss my aunt. Sigh.

Eat the Blog - adapted from a Ruth Sirkis recipe

Baroness Tapuzina's honey cake as adapted from The New Israeli Food cookbook

Bureka Boy posts two versions of honey cake and both look delicious

Adorable Honey Cake - made with honey wine! and Chocolate Fig Honey Cake (drool) both from the Food Network

One Honey of a Cake - from the Parve Baker

Bella's Honey Cake - with raisins and walnuts from Homemakers magazine (remember them?)

Lastly, a Honey Bundt cake from Recipezaar and here's a Magen David-shaped bundt pan to bake it in.

Shana Tova v'Metukah!


(If you're wondering about my free clip-art trend, it's 'cause my camera display is broken... but you can print up the clip-art and color it in! Free activities!)

Spartans and Russets and Spys, Oh My!

It's been a weird summer in Toronto. Not much heat. But now that Autumn's here, we can get to the fun stuff: apple picking!

Chudleigh's has realized that to turn a profit, they must expand. They have a petting zoo and hay rides, and a shop for knick-knacks and apple-related food stuffs. They've had these things for a while. Unfortunately, they are now calling themselves an "Entertainment Farm". A terrible term, it impinges on my urbanite fantasy of escaping to the farm for a day. If you call it an Entertainment Farm, I expect you are growing tap dancers, or have violinists in trees waiting to serenade us as we pick. Or possibly, Guitar Hero in the barn - I don't know. (And I'm not even considering the lewd options there - I leave that to you.)

I supposed I should just be happy they didn't call it "Farmetainment".

My favourite apples-from-the-tree are Spartans. They are crisp and tart-sweet and divine and NOTHING like the mushy Macintoshy "Spartans" you get in the stores.

A note for those to whom I've promised apples: neither Fuji nor Russett are in season yet - sorry!

Donuts

Sometime around the year 2000, I worked on a children's show. The show was an adaptation of a popular series of children's books. Its main flaw (in my opinion, which no one asked for) was the casting of the Asian-Canadian character with a white red-headed kid. But my little story is not about poor casting choices on low budget Canadian TV. My story is about donuts.

I worked in the production office. Like any production that shoots on locations, we had location guys (or gals, but these were guys). The cars they used to scout and prep locations were rented. The rental guy came every Friday and dropped off an invoice. With the invoice, he brought a large box of donuts.

They were the best donuts I had ever tasted. I tried to memorize the address on the box, because one day, I said to myself, I would go out there and buy a dozen myself.

Eight years later (that is, today), my friend invites me to a movie at The Queensway - a theatre in Etobicoke. Suddenly, I remember that the Best Donuts EverTM were from Etobicoke! What was the address? Royal Oak? Royal York. But what was the name of the place?

I google. I find a list of bakeries and one stands out:

SanRemo Bakery

I know this is it. This must be THE donut place. I phone to make sure.

"Yup, that's us," the saleswoman says. "But we make our donuts once a day, and they sell out pretty fast. Do you want me to put some aside for you?"

So I go. I have a divine "mixed-berry" jelly donut. I had waited eight years for it, and it lived up to the memory. That's serious quality.

They opened the bakery in the '60s and it's still family-owned and operated. The donuts are only 80 cents each. You should go.

Slurpee Sadness

I went a-walkin' in Los Angeles today. I walked and walked to get my free comics at Meltdown the comic book store (not to be confused with Meltdown the grilled cheese emporium).

It was hot out and as I neared the 7-11, I thought, "I haven't had a Slurpee in years". So I went in. Imagine my horror when I discovered that
(a) the Coke flavour wasn't ready yet
(b) there was NO SPRITE flavour (?!), and
(c) all the other flavours were either revolting or trying to be healthy

Crystal Light Sugar-Free Raspberry Lemonade?
Tropical Orange Full Throttle Frozen Fury (with ginseng, taurine, caffeine, and guarana) - like a slushy Red Bull? What's a "tropical orange", anyway?

Anyhow, all the other flavours were unappealing, so I chose the raspberry lemonade, and it was vile. I threw it out at Wendy's, but kept the Spidey cup, and bought myself a Frosty instead.

The difference between American and Canadian slurpees are here: "...the Canadian product is heavier and wetter, the difference being that the American product is injected with air and is therefore drier. This is why you can feel that itch in the back of the throat when you drink it--that's the air bubbles. The American stores have been using Cornelius equipment where as in Canada we have been using Taylor for years . Although both machines perform for their specific markets, they do create different products".

That explains part of my revulsion. Remember when you could just mix Coke and Sprite and know exactly how it would taste?

Also, did you know that Winnipeg, Manitoba is the biggest consumer of Slurpees in North America? Someone's already making a documentary about it. I wouldn't have predicted Winnipeg. I guess Tim Horton's didn't open enough locations there or something.