Time For Yummy!

Lately I find myself watching the local Italian station, with seems to have nothing but cooking shows about pasta dishes. I grew up making pasta. My father was of Italian descent and the weekly ritual of making pasta was one our favourite activities. It took me years to master making the pasta with the right texture because a fair bit of muscle is involved to get the right amount of white flour worked into dough. From there we could make all kinds of tasty dishes spagehetti, ravioli, cannaloni and even specialty desserts. Homemade sauces were also mandatory. But that was then and this is now. I have not made pasta in years because I want whole grain pasta now and earlier attempts to make it were not to my liking. However, while I still like the taste of a good white flour pasta – I know it does not satisfy my body and I end up being hungry sooner. It is not easy to find whole grain pasta when it comes to the fancier dishes, still best made by hand.

So, after much longing for the days of the past, I decided to re-visit making my own whole grain pasta. My choice was spelt ravioli with ricotta-parsley filling and a mushroom cream sauce. Yummy! The key to ravioli is very thin pasta so that it cooks nice and light. The ricotta also makes a light filling. The hard part was choosing the spelt as the flour. As a soft flour, more similar to cake and pastry flour, it is not the best for pasta. To make it stiffer and have more texture and flexibility like white wheat flour. I decide to add ground white chia. This adds more soluble fibre to absorb more of the egg wetness and helps keep it pliable. The result was good. The dough was extremely stiff and rolled very thin without breaking and had no stickiness to the touch. However, it took longer to cook than homemade pasta usually does. So the next round I added some extra water. The recipe I posted on my website is “round two” with the extra water. Remember paper-thin is the key and if you have a pasta rolling machine, it is a little easier on the arms. Otherwise, put your weight into it and give your muscles a work out.

Please note: If you want to go in baby steps towards whole grain, try a 50/50 blend of all-purpose unbleached wheat flour, preferably organic. The goal is to create a pasta that requires some chewing so you eat it slower and gives you the ability to sustain your energy and your feeling of being satisfied longer. Remember, feeling satisfied is not the same as feeling full. These are two different things. If you have eaten the right combination of food and taken the right amount of time to do so, you will not feel full or stuffed - just satisfied and the feeling will last for several hours. Using the chia even with the white flour will also aid in this because of the fibre it contains. Enjoy!

Mushroom Ricotta Ravioli Recipe

Plans Always Take a Backseat to Life

How often do you make one plan only to find yourself doing something completely different? I had planned to spend my summer launching a new website and writing. I did spend the summer launching a new website but not mine and I had to build it myself - who knew website toolbuilders could work so well because I certainly do not know html code.

It is all because an event, Feast of Flavour, Canada's Holistic Food Experince has take over my life. It will be great and the choice of foods attendees can try such as mesquite, macqui berries and teff along with the usual favourites chia, chocolate, wine and many more will be a treat but it is still not what I am suppose to be doing. Or is it? This is the dilemma for us all. Do we pursue what we want to do or do we pursue that which life throws at us whihc are we meant to do. I am even preparing a delicious dessert item to sample at the event - something I have not done for 10 years and had no plans to do again.

While we all try to figure that out what we are supposed to do, stay tuned for more information about these great foods. Some of them I am quite anxious to try in baking like lacuma powder, which can be used as a sweetener. Others like triphala, which is a combination of three Indian fruits,I have had some unexpected results like the gluten-free muffins I made - explosive results actually. But that is why I love to do this. New foods provide new results and that is the adventure most of us who cook and bake look for.

Planting and eating

Last weekend was officially “planting weekend” and for the first time in 16 years, I actually planted my vegetables and herbs. The picture on the left is what it looked like when we started and the picture below is how it looked finshed. Do I like gardening? No. And this is not a salute to the glories of the outdoors and getting back to nature. Am I good at it? No. If herbs were not basically weeds we choose to grow, I would, year after year, have little to show for the little effort I actually make. Yes, there have been some cherry

tomatoes over the years and the occasional cucumber. One year there was even kale that grew the entire season. The rhubarb, fortunately, thrives on its own without my involvement. But that is the extent of my ability to grow.
So why bother? Life is tough. People are difficult. Technology makes us able to do more and more so we do. There never seems to be enough time for all that we need to do. We have a variety of food available to us from all corners of the world, all year round and far more than we need. For many of us, it is getting harder to figure out why we do what we do and how our lives came to be as they are. That is why I like growing things that are edible. It is so simple. I plant, it grows all summer and into the fall and I go out and pick for my own consumption, something I grew. It makes me feel more connected to what is real. It reminds me of the kind of live I should be working to achieve where there is more time to have more pleasure. It is a basic activity that can help ground us and makes us feel human. While I take my hat off to the skilled gardeners who create beautiful gardens and grow copious amount of foods in a natural way, it clearly it does not require much skill grow something about since I manage to pull it off.
So do yourself a favour and grow something this summer, even if is just some delicious herbs in a planter on your balcony or in a window. Give yourself a little piece of sanity. For more ideas and tips, check out these sites:

Toronto Balconies Bloom
Life on the Balcony
Organic Gardening Tips – Athomeo Farms
Natural Pest Control Tips
Oh My Garden

A Pastry Goes Green It's Official! The 2nd Edition...

It’s official. The 2nd edition of A Pastry Queen Goes Green is finally here. With this comes the launch of a new website www.pastryqueengoesgreen.com and a new approach and reinvigoration of my love for baking and cooking. It has been a long journey since I first published the book a short two years ago and started this blog and one thing I have learned since then: Keep blog posts short! I could never understand how people wrote a blog post every week and now I do. Less is more.

Since I last wrote I have started a new professional association for holistic nutritionists, founded a newsletter and stated a whole foods cafeteria. It all sound very exciting but in the end, while the newsletter is great fun, the rest is very painful and a story for another day. As I prepared for the launch of the 2nd edition, I quickly remembered how much I enjoy creating recipes, taking their picture and sharing it with the world. So with a new determination to create, snap and blog, I will stay resolute and not be diverted to tasks that should be done by others. I know we all say that, that we will focus on that which is in our best interests and then we let the world take over our lives but this time I really mean it… I swear… really. And on that note, I will stick to my other resolution to keep this short. So I am done…finished…really.

Stay tuned for the more….

In the meantime, enjoy the muffin recipe, a tried and true favourite served at many an event. It has also had many names, none of which, really matter because in the end it is the ingredients that count and these muffins are nutrient rich, most and delicious. Enjoy!