Ukrainian Easter and 2 Week Slaw

                    As I'm milling around through the alleys and greenways through the city I've been cloning and transplanting wild herbs for my garden. Ive been successful transplanting wild fennel, mint, fern and lemon balm to my yard. Other garden updates. Broad beans are flowering, purple sprouting broccoli is almost ready to harvest, 18 kale plants have been moved into the ground, 12 pea plants, green beans and 2 variety of carrots sowed. Garden is producing lots of oregano, rosemary, parsley, sage, mint and thyme. Nights have been mild and days have been very warm. I also turned my child's Ikea stuffed toy holder into a solar dehydrator for drying herbs. I have a dehydrator but with herbs I prefer a nice slow and low air dry.

               We had the most epic Ukrainian Easter spread this year. We got pashka bread and Brooklyn style dark chocolate babka bread from Kozak Ukrainian Bakery. If you live in Vancouver and have never fucked with their stuff, GO THERE!!!! Heres a link to the page.  https://www.kozakeatery.ca
I made a hickory honey ham on the treager. We also made cabbage rolls, cottage cheese, beet horseradish sauce, potatoes and sour cream.

 Covid bonus****Local mushroom farms are overproducing and have extra bags for sale on the cheap to grow your own oyster mushrooms at home. Its been a fun project for the kids. They love misting the shrooms and watching them grow. Its real crazy how fast they get going once they start popping.

Been making lots of quick pickles lately. They are nice in contrast to the full sour and vinegar pickles made last fall.

Ive been playing around with old school Slaw recipes. On the bottom left of the plate above is the Classic prairie "14 day slaw" This is my version of this classic refrigerator pickle.

                                                      14 Day Slaw (Refrigerator Pickled Cabbage)
Dressing:
1+ 1/2 cups vinegar (I used organic apple cider but have used white)
1/2 cup water (every chef loves when this ingredient is in a recipe!!)
1 + 1/4  cups white sugar (or any kind of sugar you want, also use less if you want it less sweet)
1 tbsp celery seeds
2 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp ground turmeric
2 tsp salt (or more to taste)
1/2 cup grape seed oil (or other non solidifying oil)
In a saucepan stir dressing ingredients and bring to a boil. Be sure all sugar is dissolved. Cool. Add grape seed oil.

Salad Ingredients: 
1 large head of cabbage, shredded
1 whole yellow onion, grated finely
1 or 2 green peppers, shredded (optional)
1/2 cup chopped salad olives with pimento (optional)

Combine everything together in a large bowl, let sit for 20 minutes. Pack into one litre mason jars. They should be coved with the liquid if not now by morning. Let sit overnight before serving. Can be stored in the fridge for several weeks. I like to drizzle a little olive oil over them before serving them.
Enjoy!!!!!!!

Maybe a return??

             It has been many years since I've posted anything on here. Maybe because of all the new ways to share information, life getting busy or me just being creatively lazy? Maybe all of the above. I was thinking of maybe doing a revival. Im going to try to post once every week for a month and see how it goes. 
             2020 has been a crazy start. As I'm writing this, my family is on week 3 of physically distancing from people and stores. We try to limit our trips to the store to lower our risk of infection. Looking back at this, it could read like its the end of the world, but everyone in the world can relate to what I'm going through. COVID-19 has taking over our lives whether we like it or not. Having basic know how on what our ancestors did in rough times and the conveniences of modern times appliances etc, one can eat and live quite well, mentally and physically. Im not going to get into particulars about how I'm coping with everything, but I would like to share with you some things I've been doing to get though this time. 
       

                                 Our Daily Bread (aka covid-loaf #2) 

My family likes bread. Good home made bread. I will post several bread/dough recipes but this is the one we are currently enjoying. Give it a shot and send me a message if you have any questions about it. 

300g Organic Unbleached Flour (I use Anita's) 
300g Organic Whole Wheat Flour ( I use Nunweuler's) 
300g Hot Tap Water
25g whole milk
25g grapeseed oil (or whatever you got, I've even used bacon grease!)
6g active dry yeast +sprinkle of sugar
12g Sea salt
2 tbsp (but I never measure) Crosby's Molasses 

Method
1) Turn on your oven, set timer for 5 minutes. Turn off oven after 5 mins. (we will proof the bread in here) 
2) Run your tap till its really hot. Put yeast and a sprinkle of sugar in a small coffee mug. You don't have to use sugar but it speeds things along. Pour just enough hot water to just cover the yeast. Stir and let sit. 
3) Meanwhile. Weigh out your flours and put in your mixer along with salt and molasses.  
4) Weigh out your water or use Millilitres its the same thing. Did you know that? haha
5) When yeast is foamy add to flour as well as water you weighed out. You used hot tap water right? 
6) Turn mixer on low and mix for ten minutes. Yes ten minutes. Turn off remove dough hook when done and cover the mixing bowl with a plate or something to create a pretty good seal. We don't want top drying out on us. 
7) Wait about a hour. Maybe longer maybe less. It will double in size. If your house is cold you might have to flash oven on and off quickly to keep in cozy warm. Not oven warm, we are not baking the bread yet. 
8) When doubled in size, pull out to a floured work table. Make a square and roll the whole thing up tight as your can tucking the ends under to make torpedo looking chunk of dough. 
9) place in a greased bread pan and cover with a clean rag. Don't you your dirty kitchen rag you animal. haha
10) Once covered place on top of your oven. Do not place it directly over the vent from your oven, you will screw up your work of art. Turn your oven at 450f
11) After about 30 minutes your dough should be just under doubled in size. This is perfect. Pop it in your oven and set timer for 15 minutes. 
12) after 15 minutes turn oven down to 350f. 
13) pop loaf out of pan onto cooling rack to cool down. Enjoy!!!! 

I like to use a different mixer every time I make bread cause I love them all soooo much!! Yes im sick I know!!   

Covid Loaf#2

Bum Life

Makin tha bacon!!

Heading to town for some supplies, no big deal! lol

Not inspired to go very far when its like this!

Its February!! Wow, its been a great winter so far. My xmas ham was the most epic piece of meat Ive created to this day. A real show stopper. Doing some work on my kitchen in tha ole cabin, tweaking some things and having fun. January was a cold month. There was not many days above -40C. Today its -20C and very sunny, feels like I could wear a t-shirt out there! Time to hit the frozen food cache hard this month. Pork rouladen tonight, chum salmon tomorrow and smoking some Cornish game hens for the weekend. Life is good! Happy new year everyone!! :) Also,  a link to my new article in Whats up Yukon,  http://www.whatsupyukon.com/index.php/2012-02-02-22-33-17.html 

The ole smoked tasso ham chops!

Loading The Bullet

Smoking all afternoon today. Its warmed up to -25C so, thought I would take advantage of the warm weather and fire up the water smoker. Thought about the side ribs and decided to do kind of a play on hot dogs! Took all the flavours of your classic frank, (pepper, sage, nutmeg, salt, sugar) made a rub, sprinkled  a little ground chili, for good measure and left them over night. I made a ketchup and celery seed BBQ sauce to brush them with when there done. Smoking everything with old growth willow. Looking forward to trying these. I'm also smoking pork belly and country ribs (pork shoulder ribs) The pork belly, I did straight up salt and tons of pepper. The shoulder ribs I did Texas chill powder and a bit of sugar and salt. 

Will post the results on here and my twitter feed. These side ribs are for a local rib off challenge in town tonight. Not sure how many ppl are going, but should be fun. Im not planning to take home the blue ribbon with these ribs, but who knows, everyone like a good ole frank right? haha

Side ribs, country ribs and pork belly

Freeze Up

My new home! :)

         Still getting my feet wet in my new digs. Having fun with the fact that I have no power or water. Makes everything slightly more challenging, but nothing worth stressing out over. Not to mention the fact that were are in the freeze up time right now, where people are waiting on this side of the Yukon river till it freezes solid enough to walk on to get back into town! This could be between 3 to 5 weeks depending on the weather.   
               Back in the cabin, I'm still getting used to my new gas range. It really wails out the heat when you need it, so adjusting recipe bake temps may take a little while. Cooking a lot on my wood stove top as well. It seems to be hovering around -15c during the day and dips into the -20's overnight so stoking the fire twice a day to cook has not been a issue.  Juggling with my food coolers is fun and has taking a bit of a "break in" period to get in the swing of things.

          Smoked some pork that I got from Joan at Grizzly Valley farms yesterday. Dam near lit my shed on fire while doing it too!! haha, note to self............ remember to remove ugly drum from porch before firing it up, it tends to warm up under the fire box. hahaha rookie move. After averting a possible scenario, the pork came out epic! The pig was a cross between a English large black and a Tamworth. Soooo delicious words don't do justice. Will be smoking the ham in the next week or so. 

.

one hell of a slab o bacon! :)

So Busy!

I’ve been sooo busy the last month that I’ve had no time to write or do much cooking really. Ive bought a cabin that does not have power or water, so I’ve been working on setting it up. I will have Internet at my cabin via satellite after the weekend. Time has gone by so fast, I’m trying to keep up. My head is not stuck in the mud, don’t give up on me yet, I plan to get back at it in November!  Hope you all had a great thanks giving. There is however a large black pig butchered and hang in various spots around town and at my cabin!! hehe

Fall Is Here!

Leaves are changing, frost is biting down at night and the nights are getting darker. Ive actually started to panic, because winter will be here and I'm not ready yet! I have not put up any vegetables yet, as Ive been so busy with work. I have a healthy amount of mushrooms to eat, so should be good in that department. Just put a order in with our farmer for some winter veg to store. Planning on doing some beet pickles and going to try ole Aunt Mildred's cauliflower pickle relish. Check out this summer series short films by the great people at www.klondikesun.com  The first one is me talking and cooking about shrooms, the second one is a friend of mine, talking about the community gardens in town. Very cool! :) I think we can expect more great stories and films because of the big boom happening in the north. Cranberries are looking plump and just need a bit more frost to pick up and wood is starting to be piled outside the many cabins of the north in anticipation for winter!  Heres a link to a related article by Alyssa Frieson from Whats Up Yukon related to the mushrooms up here. http://www.whatsupyukon.com/index.php/component/content/article/270-august-11-2011/3394-mush-rush-101.html