" title="something lemon"> something lemon

Cartoon Credit: Hungry Bunyip's Blog

I continue being kitchen-less and barren of home-baked goods. Posts have been pretty much non-existent as a result.

But kitchen-less status will be coming to an end in a couple of weeks. I’m no longer minus a home and yet plus many many pairs of shoes! This weekend, in addition to drinking the most amazing hot chocolate at Soma Chocolate, I also found an apartment. I just walked in and thought: this is the kind of apartment that matches my new orange Fluevogs. It was home.

So now I do the lemon dance and wait to move in so that the baking and the resulting posts can begin.

A recent post for Tenth to the Fraser got me thinking: what does the city where I spend most of my time, Port Moody, inspire me to eat?

For some reason the first thing that I want to reach for when I think of Port Moody is some Vitamin Water! People are always running on the sidewalks. And if you think that’s not hard enough, I see people trail running in the mountains, cycling uphill, and doing things that make me feel sporty just watching. Needless to say fruits, vegetables, seafood, and anything “healthy” is abound in this city. Which makes me wonder: why am I living here given my love for chocolate, ice cream, and everything opposite of healthy? Must find a city that considers cookies an essential food group.

Sigh.

So living in Port Moody I feel inspired to go to the farmer’s market weekly and eat my salad daily. Plus, the stream of Port Moody tweets regarding locally sourced foods, gardening, and composting seems never ending. Which reminds me, I need to go take care of my sourdough starter now.

What are your thoughts? How does your city inspire your food choices?

Also, if you live in a city that inspires chocolate as lunch of choice, please let me know.

Somewhere under the heaviness of the black skirts of Mary Boulton I struggled to breathe. Gil Adamson‘s descriptions of the woods and mountains in The Outlander are lyrical and painterly, but also dark as we follow this self-widowed, almost witch-like, maybe even mad, Mary through the woodland — fleeing.

This locavore heroine is introduced as a murderess. Gloomy. An inept housewife. And her attempts at foraging for food sometimes resulted in unpleasant stews, only brought to mouth’s desire by hunger. She may have thought herself an inept housewife, but she certainly inspired Martha-like behaviour in me. I started roasting hazelnuts almost daily, adding them to my salads and grinding them to be used for a Queen’s Mother Cake or with coffee beans for my morning brew. Maybe it helped that it was cold and rainy while I was reading The Outlander. Or maybe it was that my local Farmer’s Market offered hazelnuts. But the smell of hazelnuts filling my kitchen, combined with the warmth feeling they created in me, made me feel like I was part of nature. I felt that somehow I was experiencing the same feelings Mary would have when she sat close to a fire and drank coffee.

So going past the hazelnut madness, what did I think of The Outlander? I loved it! Except that it left me with an intense craving for rabbit stew! Luckily I don’t live in the wild and can go to a cozy French eatery — Bistrot Bistro. The destination is a simpler, cleaner, more honest French, with strong, pure flavours and back-to-basics cooking techniques and food served in the pots they were cooked in. The rabbit stew was delicious, resting in a rich pool of white wine cream sauce, bringing me closer to the adventures of Mary Boulton. My friend and I shared this stew with perhaps an atypical combination:  Duck Confit Macaroni and cheese and some chocolate mousse. The chef had made a big bowl of chocolate mousse and our server brought the bowl right to our table, taking what seemed like a mountain of chocolate for my friend and I to share.

I would recommend this book, but be warned: cravings for stew might consume you.

Side note:

I always wear a lot of black and so can not say that Mary’s big and heavy black funeral outfit, a significant contributor to her witch-like allure, had any influence on my fashion choices. But she did inspire me to wear my Foks scarf.