Tristan’s been showing me videos (cute, I guess) of pigs for the last little while and pushing for an apartment pig (never going to happen), so for his birthday I took him to hang out on a farm.
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Well, I still have rhubarb recipes gathering dust in my drafts file and I had hoped to post those before popping back here to simply announce that the next instalment of Kate’s Plate is live over at Ottawa Magazine (online and in print!), and yet here I am. Something about the best laid plans going awry…
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Well, this is kind of exciting– “Kate’s Plate” has gone beyond this little blog! After my first article in print came out in January, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to continue working on a regular food column for Ottawa Magazine…called Kate’s Plate. Who would have thought.
The column focuses on one local seasonal ingredient; I get to play with it and chat with great people in the city. For the spring issue of the magazine the editors had picked rhubarb as the star ingredient. So, in January I embarked on a rhubarb adventure completely out of rhubarb season. I had rhubarb on the brain a lot. Probably too much; I started referring to my very lovely editor at the time, Ruth, as Ruthbarb. (Sorry, Ruth!)
Sounds fun, right? Totally! But also a little intimidating, having mostly just written, taken photos, and cooked for myself without any pressure. So, to anyone who heard me talk about the “edgy veggie”, or who taste tested, or helped in any way — thank you for supporting Kate’s Plate’s first off-blog venture!
The spring magazine should be on newsstands tomorrow, but you can go check out my little column on Ottawa Magazine’s website. One of the recipes is just in time for Purim, too!
Hope you guys like it and, as always, thanks so much for reading.
Even with that extra leap day in February the month flew by.
The month started off with dinner in a high school. Not really a place that makes one think of exciting culinary events, but Longfields Davidson Heights Secondary School has something special going on.
I was lucky enough to be invited to the sixth annual Food for Thought where students in LDHSS’ culinary program are teamed up with professional chefs to cook and serve a six course meal to over 100 guests. The whole thing was for a good cause and was a great success.
Leading up to the big dinner I spent a day Continue reading
My lunch break yesterday was a departure from my regular sandwich or salad. Instead, I sampled pitsi and maktaaq and tuttuminiq quaq.
…Intrigued? Then you might want to check out A Taste of the Arctic! (That’s dried Arctic char, beluga skin, and raw caribou, if you were wondering.)
As I munched on (more than a few) pieces of candied Arctic char, I watched as meat was expertly sliced with sharp ulus, traditional Inuit made blades, and learned more about Inuit culinary customs (apparently the eye of the fish is a treat that people fight over!).
Bannock, the quintessential bread, was the only food on offer that was familiar to me, but I was pleasantly surprised by all the new things I tried. One of the ulu-yielding women drew similarities between the raw fish and meat we were eating and Asian sushi, something that doesn’t seem so unfamiliar. Raw, smoked, dried, candied, or frozen, it was neat to see fish and meat prepared in so many ways on one table. (The most traditional way being “pulled straight out of the water and served” I was told — talk about catch of the day.)
I was glad we arrived before the sunset. With a crooked arrow pointing us to the winding back road to Deadlock Bay, we joked that this was how horror movies started (not that I would really know, since I’m too much of a wimp to watch them).
A good friend of mine and I sometimes joke about worrying that we peaked in high school. We were just big fish in a little pond, but I sometimes feel that I lost some of the confidence I had after I left that teenage-comfort zone. It might be that I’m overthinking things, or it might just be a part of growing up—maybe a bit of both.
While I often found my undergrad challenging, I find myself occasionally missing the structure that came with the “occupation” of being a student and the kind of certainty it offered; I knew what I was doing with my life for a solid chunk of time (that good ole’ BSc), at least most of the time. And even if I didn’t know what lay ahead after graduation, I had another year or two to think about it, another semester or two, another week or two…
Since graduating, I’ve doubted myself a lot in a way that doesn’t feel like “me”. I’ve given in to mini-cry sessions that creep up on me without warning, and indulged in little pity parties for seemingly no reason. Motivation has been a little low, Netflix usage has gone up. I have learned how to cross stitch. Continue reading
