Check out this incredible series of rare colour photographs of rural and small towns following the Great Depression.

Last Friday, me and Courtney canned (or “put up”) some fresh Ontario-grown cucumbers and beets. Canning was something I’d been thinking about doing for a while, but it seemed kind of complicated to do on a casual basis. And yes, canning is a bit complicated. It took a few days of studying canning manuals, watching canning videos, and planning my canning plan of attack. “Can I even do this?” I wondered. But now I know that I can. And so can you! We all can can.

Alright, that’s enough of that.

So what would I want to know about canning if it was a week ago and I didn’t know anything about canning? Here are a few things:

Supplies

You need a large (20 L) enamel-coated pot with a rack in the bottom to keep the jars off the bottom. These go for about $20-25, but you might be able to find one at a thrift store too. You should also buy a canning accessories kit ($10-15), which will include: a funnel, a jar-lifter, a head-space measure, a stick with a magnet on the end (for lifting lids out of hot water). After that, all you need is jars and they are cheap and reusable. You can only use the flat part of a two-piece lid once, though, so buy extra!

What to Put Up

Put up the best, freshest in-season fruit and vegetables you can get. Price and quality wise, it’s best to visit a local farmers’ market to buy your produce. I went to the Square One Farmers’ Market in Mississauga (Friday & Sunday, 8am-6pm, rain or shine) and it was a lot better than the city farmers’ markets that I’ve been to. Not only were the prices incredible ($6 for enough beets to make 9 500ml jars!), the advice was free: one vendor advised me to buy long beets rather than round beets because the slices would be more uniform; another made me up a basket of perfectly-ripe peaches when I told them I’d be jamming the next morning.

Don’t forget to thoroughly clean your produce and cut out any brown or overripe sections. It took me a good long time to properly scrub my little cucumbers with a vegetable brush and I threw out the ones that were too yellow and starting to lose their “warts”.

Pickling Spice

“Ain’t nobody want a bland pickle,” my Grandpappy used to say. Pre-mixed pickling spices are available commercially, but I decided to go the DIY route. Here’s the recipe I used:

2 tbs mustard seeds
2 tbs whole allspice
2 tbs dill seed
2 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp whole cloves
2 tsp whole green peppercorns
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp dried red pepper flakes
1 bay leaf, crumbled
1 cinnamon stick (2 inches)

…and then I multiplied it by 4. Note: whole allspice is expensive!

Making Brine

Brine is your best friend. Brine is your co-pilot. You must respect the brine.

No really, brine is what makes this canning business happen. When high-acid foods are processed at a temperature of over 180 degrees, the bacteria that causes botulism is killed off. So by taking low-acid foods like cucumbers and pickling it in a high-acid brine, it’s like you’re artificially creating a high-acid food. Tomatoes are naturally high-acid, so they can be processed without quite so much vinegar. But pickles and beets are going to need a lot of vinegar, so buy a big jug of 5% white vinegar from the grocery store ($3-4). I went through an entire jug by the end of our pickling evening, it was nuts.

Your brine will eventually consist of vinegar, water and salt, which you will boil on the stove for 10-15 minutes. Tie 2 tbs of pickling spice in a cheesecloth and throw ‘er in to work her magic. Boiling brine smells rather pungent so don’t stick your face over the pot for too long.

Brine is a bit tricky. The brine in my pickles came out slightly cloudy, which is little more than an aesthetic complaint but one I’d like to fix. My next batch should be alright if I use purified water rather than Toronto tap water and boil the brine in a ceramic-coated pot rather than metal. It’s all about limiting the mineral content.

A special note about salt: do not use table salt! It has additives that will make your brine cloudy and soften your produce. Use pickling salt or kosher salt, as they contain no additives. The only difference between picking and kosher salt is the size and shape of the salt crystal: pickling salt is very fine and kosher salt is flaked. If a recipe calls for 1tbs of pickling salt, you can substitute 1.5tbs of kosher salt to account for the space between the flakes.

Filling and Processing Your Jars

It is so much easier to show you how to do this than to explain it in words, so I will direct you to the best video about canning that I used:

Thank you, that guy! Also worth watching: this awesome Cajun man making pickled beets from his garden. Essentially what I’m saying is, why take canning advice from hipsters or sorority girls when you can take canning advice from older southern gentlemen?

Uhhh, but take pickling advice from me, of course.

The canning adventures continue! Pictures to follow!

Can you believe? Athletics-averse me is halfway through the Couch to 5k running program. In a little over a month, I have gone from alternating between 90 seconds walking and 60 seconds jogging to jogging 3-5 minute stretches. I am seven runs away from jogging 25 minutes continuously, which sounds terrifying, but I’ve been able to keep up with the program so far.

While my stamina has improved and my butt and calf muscles are noticeably more toned, I’m just as proud of my newfound athletic confidence. I have a lot of negative associations with sports which date back to my childhood, when my precocious height and musculature guaranteed me a spot on every public school athletics team—whether I wanted to be there or not. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been forced into racing at cross country meets only to be last over the finish line, how many lay-ups I’ve missed at 7th grade basketball tournaments, and how many times I’ve fallen on my butt representing my school in triple-jump at Durham regionals. So many participation ribbons, so many glares from teammates, so little glory. No wonder I broke up with athletics.

But me and athletics were overdue for a reconciliation.

When I started running a month ago, I stuck to quiet residential streets in Cabbagetown. During the daytime, the only people in the area are moms-n-tots and building contractors; none pay much attention to the sweaty girl wheezing by them in her oversized t-shirt and pale, chunky legs. Today, I ran along Dundas and then back home on Gerrard—both major commuter routes for bikes and cars. Did I huff and puff and sweat in front of all those people on their way to their fancy Bay Street jobs? Yes I did, and I didn’t care! I used to stretch in my living room; now I stretch in parkettes or empty sidewalks.

Last week, I came downstairs in the morning with my hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing a neon yellow racerback tanktop and a pair of capri-length athletic pants, stinking like sunscreen. As I strapped on my running shoes and my iPod armband, Pete laughed and said, “Hey, you look like a runner!”

Thanks, I am!

I started buying whole pineapples a couple of months ago. I’ll butcher them and stick ‘em in a big tupperware on Sundays for my weekday breakfast. Now I think I’m addicted to them. I’m starting to need two pineapples a week!

Why am I telling you this? It’s mostly so I’d have an excuse to post this awesome painting of King Charles II of England being presented the first pineapple grown in England by his royal gardener, John Rose. The spaniel down in front (a King Charles spaniel to boot!) is like, “What is that spiky thing?? I’ll kill it!”

I enjoy that this moment, “The Delivery of the Royal Pineapple”, was captured for posterity. Partly because it’s funny, but partly because I sometimes feel like pineapple deserves this kind of reverence.

I love you, pineapple.

It’s so nice outside!

Hanging out on my deck with my man, my cat, my plants, cold soba noodles and a Brooklyn lager, it’s hard to believe that Toronto got a light snowfall a couple weeks ago. It’s also my first summer in an apartment with central air. Lifestyle: I has it.

I’ve been on this cold soba (buckwheat noodles) binge recently; I eat it maybe 4 times a week. So fast, so easy, so healthy, so delicious! Put this in your mouth:

Cold Soba with Broccoli and Avocado

Boil: soba noodles (I like King Soba) for 6-7 minutes; at minute 3-4ish throw some broccoli florets in the pot of water to blanch; when noodles are cooked, strain through a colander and rinse with cold water.

Mix: low-sodium tamari, mirin, sesame oil, wasabi powder and “dashi” (I’ve been substituting with broth and Thai fish sauce) in a bowl. I just mix it to taste.

Traditionally, soba is eaten by dipping it into the sauce with your chopsticks but that’s too fussy for home eating! I just toss all the noodles and broccoli with the sauce beforehand. Then the noodles and broc go into a bowl where they’re topped with shredded nori and black sesame seeds. Serve with a half avocado.

(I was out of broccoli this evening, so I served a side of edamame instead.)

This is a meal you can eat every night of the week and feel good about. Buckwheat noodles are low in gluten and thus easy to digest, and they contain lots of essential nutrients, amino acids and anti-oxidants. Avocados are loaded with healthy monosaturated fats. Nori has concentrated amounts of vitamins and minerals. And of course, broccoli is broccoli.

And now it’s time for some photographs of cats and plants!

I call this Portrait of a Cat with Soybean and Icecube.

So many feets!!!

We started our gardening last weekend, but still have a lot of work to do. We can’t find anything to attach our window boxes to the deck railing (it’s a weird railing)! But once we sort it out, it’s going to look so good. And then there’s some lettuce and chili peppers on the left that are waiting to be re-potted in a week or two. Not pictured: the dozen tomato and purple basil plants I don’t have room for.

What are you growing in your garden?

Yesterday me and my friends started a meme, inspired by a conversation between Johnnie and Amy about the weirdness of Allison Janney arriving in the third last episode of Lost as some previously unheard of mystical figure who holds all the secrets of the island.

Like, what if Allison Janney showed up in the last few episodes of any show to introduce some new mythology? Like Gilmour Girls, Dawson’s Creek, Twin Peaks, Roseanne, and Frasier?

The best part is, I don’t even watch Lost anymore (suckers!). I just read recaps online and watch The West Wing, which has just the right amount of Janney.

Oh hipsters, with their retro cameras and expired film and shaky coke arms and expensive haircuts. Now you can replicate the hipster photography experience on your hipster handheld device with Hipstamatic app!

The standard app is $1.99 but you also can download $0.99 lens, film and flash extras like the “Williamsburg” and “Shibuya” packs. And check out the gorgeous interface in the video above! Loves it, y’all.

Bored/sexy/barfing was the look I was going for.

Here is a video of me in pizza-making action! I had my pals from my class from Impatient Theatre Co. over for gourmet pizza-stone pizza last night. Here’s what I made:

Pizza #1, “Terroso”: Sauteed mushrooms, caramelized leeks, roasted garlic, red pepper flakes, mozzarella, pecorino romano.

Pizza #2, “Catalina”: Homemade tomato sauce, roasted red peppers, chevre, arugula, lemon, pepper.

Pizza: #3, “Patate e Rosmarino”: Yukon Gold potato, rosemary, gruyere, caramelized onion, roasted garlic, sea salt ‘n’ pepper.

Pizza is what you make for those you love, and I adore my Improv 201 group. We’re having a student show on Wednesday, May 5 at Comedy Bar in Toronto, so check it out!

Yesterday I bought a Microplane grater (Gourmet Series – Fine) from that kitchen supply store in St. Lawrence Market to replace my cheap Microplane-imposter grater. This morning I decided to zest a lemon to test the difference. It was incredible! Go name-brand Microplane!

But then I had all this zest sitting around with no plans for it. What to do? I hadn’t even had my coffee yet, so I wasn’t in the mood for a big baking project. Then it struck me: lemon curd! Lemon curd only has four ingredients, takes 15 minutes to make, and the payoff is luscious sweet-n-tart goo that is good to spread on anything.

Ingredients
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 tbs lemon zest
2/3 cup white sugar
3 eggs
4 tbs butter, small pieces

Directions
Combine eggs, sugar and lemon zest in a metal bowl. Place metal bowl over a pot of simmering water (double boiler) and set a timer for 10 minutes. Whisk! Whisk like you’ve never whisked before! If you don’t whisk fast enough, you’ll get little chunks of cooked egg and will have to strain the curd. Whisk like a madman, and you can skip the straining step. After 10 minutes, take the bowl off the boiler and add the butter and zest. Whisk together. Transfer to a smaller bowl, cover with plastic wrap and put in fridge to set. If you push the wrap down so it touches the curd’s surface, it won’t develop an icky skin.

The National Maritime Museum (Greenwich, U.K.) has an amazing photostream on Flickr. They recently added a collection of antique photographs of animals at sea!

Cute puppies! Agile kitties! Confused wallabies! Yessss!

Via boyreporter.