HOT CAT

Cleo's discovered the joys of radiators. Wish I could laze around all day next to a heat source.

Oops, I woke her up.

A NEW CAKE

Something happens to me when RB's on band tour. About halfway through the time he's gone I find myself NEEDING indulgence. But then I have this little inner conflict were one side of me is like 'mmmmm, cake would be good!' and then the other side says 'but elizabeth! you can't eat a whole cake yourself!' So I usually push these thoughts out of my head until about the three week point where I finally break down and have to make 8 batches of cookies or something. Of course, it's timed perfectly cause I can pretend that I only made whatever sweet confection I did in anticipation of RB's arrival. Ha!

Sorry baby, it's really all about me.

So on Sunday I tried out this new ginger cake recipe that you can find here. Let's take a look at the mise en place, shall we?:

This cake contains flour, a bit of sugar, cinnamon, black pepper & cloves, water, vegetable oil, eggs, molasses, baking powder and 4 oz fresh grated ginger.

I don't own a kitchen scale so I really just faked what I thought four ounces might be (I tried to imagine four shot glasses). Anyway, there was a lot of ginger-peeling and ginger-grating going on until I felt like I'd accumulated enough.

Mixing+ melting+ creaming + an hour later:

And the verdict? Well, I think this is a rather nice little cake. I could've upped the ginger content quite a bit without the flavour becoming overpowering, nevertheless the cake was lovely and moist and tasted delicious. It's really not very sweet at all and so would work great as a base for, say, a rich cream cheese icing (which I don't like) or maybe a quick salted caramel sauce and spiced whipped cream (which I do like, very much).

Go forth and make cake.

SPOOOOOOKIEST COOKIES.

It was a dark and chocolate night....

Cleo and I needed a treat last night. This year we're spending halloween all on our lonesome since R is away on band tour and my dress-up friends are visiting New York, boo hoo for us. Lucky these cookies help soothe a couple lonely girls while also containing the requisite orange and black of the season. Essentially just chocolate chip cookies with the addition of sweet/sour, chewy dried apricots, these babies have quickly become my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe of all.

First start with some good chocolate. I like to use super dark, bitter bars but regular chocolate chips work fine and I've even used chopped-up leftover chocolate truffles at christmas which made for some truly amazing cookies.

Next some apricots. The best kind to use are the brown, wrinkly organic ones which have not been treated with sulpher dioxide, but my little local grocery only had the plump sunmaid variety. Oh well, the colour's right.

Chop up 1 1/2 - 2 cups of chocolate and 1/2 cup dried apricots.

Measure out 2 cups of flour and add 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt. Meanwhile melt 3/4 cup butter (you could certainly use margerine but I use butter because butteriness is next to godliness) and let it cool slightly. To the melted butter add 1 cup packed brown sugar. Beat an egg and add to the sugar/butter mixture (+ an extra yolk if you have one, if not don't worry about it). Also add 1TB of vanilla (and PLEASE, if anyone is going to Mexico in the near future, I am almost out of vanilla and in desperate need of more. Bring home vanilla!). Beat lightly.

Add dry ingredients to the wet until just combined and gently mix in chocolate and apricots. Oh, and you should've pre-heated your oven to 325 and lined some cookie sheets with parchment. Drop heaping tablespoonfuls onto cookie sheets, spaced at least 1 1/2" apart and cook for 12 minutes. You should end up with about 16-18 cookies.

And if you're like me, you'll eat them for breakfast the next morning. Be like me, do the breakfast cookie thing, it's fantastic. On the other hand, DO NOT be like me if you feel the urge to watch Paranormal Activity right before bed the day before halloween. Watching a film about a demonic presence literally making things go bump in the night when you're home alone for two weeks in a relatively new apartment? And it's 100 years old? And the plumbing's not great? And you've just turned the furnace on for the first time? Yeah, great idea dummy.

MONTREAL + FAMILY

This year's Thanksgiving holiday I was lucky enough to get to spend time at Elizabeth and RB's new apartment in Montreal. It was my first time in Montreal and was made extra special because our brother was also able to make it down. Our thanksgiving dinner was spent at our second (?) cousin's Golf course near Kingston, Ontario and we will have some fun photos of that to share with you soon. Elizabeth and RB were great hosts, taking us on fun walking and driving tours of Montreal's highlights. (Thank-you!)

These photos are from us walking around the old Expo '67 grounds.

(Elizabeth showing us all how she can fit between the bars)

LITTLE GEMS

Mary's visiting Montreal from Vancouver right now and we took advantage of the grey, rainy weather yesterday to have a little sunshine party at home. First we trekked north to Jean Talon market in search of strawberries and peaches, then home again for lazy afternoon jam making and scary movie viewing. I use the term 'jam' loosely as our end product is much more a strawberry preserve, still, sweet, sunshiney and delicious. Ain't we domestic?

GIFTS WE GIVE OURSELVES

This past weekend was the Puces Pop festival, a large arts and crafts fair run concurrently with Pop Montreal. Raymond participated in the sale and ended up selling out of his brand new New Yorker print, it was insane. The place was packed from the moment the doors opened in the morning till the day's end at 6pm, holy claustrophobia.

There were a ton of people selling numerous treasures including this gift I bought myself, a little handcrafted oxidized silver and pyrite ring designed by Marie Khediguian under her label Markhed. As soon as I saw it I knew this piece was for me, it's the perfect blend of delicate and hard, upscale and hand-forged. Ever wanna buy me jewellery? make sure it's mean, make sure it's organic and make sure it's simple, simple, simple. What I especially love about this piece is that Marie lets the materials speak for themselves. She recognizes the strength in lack of frills or perfection, the details remain the nature of the metals/minerals themselves; as my friend Carmen stated, 'it's goooood'.

MY HOOD

R and I are lucky to live on a fantastic street in a truly interesting neighborhood in Montreal. Next door to us live a family whose 93-year-old patriarch was born in the house where his grown children still live. Our own building is cooperatively owned by a group of individuals who bought it 30 years ago after coveting it from their then-apartment across the street. Three of those original owners still live here and Robert, the owner of our apartment, maintains a studio in the old stables out back despite having recently moved to a house further north. This is an area rich with history, family and friendship. There is a unique intermingling of age, language, outlook and interests and many play an active role in this community.

Currently our alley is home to a magical photo exhibition, Laterna Magica, by artist (and neighbor) Loren Williams. Ms. Williams canvassed residents of two Plateau streets for photographs of the neighborhood from their own family archives. Some images are mounted on board and hung throughout the alleyway, others are displayed backlit in windows of current residents, best viewed after 7pm when the sun has gone down. Altogether it makes for a fascinating glimpse into our neighborhood over the course of many decades (and I'm sure a trip down memory lane for many).

For example, then:

and now:

One fence hosts a series of little doors which open to reveal knotholes:

Which on further inspection show former residents of the back gardens held within:

A series of historic postcards mounted on board show idyllic scenes of Parc La Fontaine, just one block away from our house:

An archive map from the turn of the century, can you find where we live?

The carriage house/stables behind our building as they stand today:

And a photograph of former inhabitants:

At night the backlit photos take on a somewhat eerie quality, reminding one of lives lived and ended in these very streets, these homes.

Totally fascinating.