I've been cutting back a lot of good things out of my diet: mainly meat, eggs, and dairy. That's put a kink into my cooking, to say the least.

But I figure Valentine's Day is a special occasion, so I returned (much like a canine to his regurgitation) to my bad habits and made some sticky buns for my wife.

From Valentine's Day Cinnamon Buns

I've been playing with cinnamon buns for the last year or so, and have found they offer a high return on investment. They're not nearly so difficult to make as they look, and almost everyone loves them.

There's some room for variety with cinnamon rolls: I generally make way too much caramel and turn them into a sort of a caramel bun. But recently I've been making a simple butter frosting and serving them that way instead.

From Valentine's Day Cinnamon Buns

Probably my favourite variation is to put raisins in them, although Ames isn't such a huge fan. One interesting twist I tried was chopping a couple apples finely and rolling bits of chopped apple into the cinnamon spiral. That worked out rather well.

I use the simple cinnamon bun recipe I found in A Century of Canadian Home Cooking. The buns are chewy and soft, but they don't age well and feel stale within a couple days. Not like that's generally a problem.

We got up early, made some coffee, and ate fresh hot cinnamon buns. That was a great way to start the day.

From Valentine's Day Cinnamon Buns

Baking Day

It's only been fairly recently that I realized Americans really don't do butter tarts. You'd think I'd've noticed before now: since I moved to the States I've only seen and eaten butter tarts when I've been home visiting. Apparently they're a Canadian treat, who knew?

If you're not familiar with butter tarts, they're a delectable caramel confection, much like a southern pecan pie, but not as gelatinous. The filling is mainly butter and sugar. When I was growing up, they always had raisins in them, but they're not raisin tarts: the raisins are more of an adjunct than a main ingredient. The end result is a sort of caramel tart with a buttery, slightly gooey center.

From Baking day

Butter tarts aren't for the faint of heart. These little guys are pancreatic death bombs. If you've got blood sugar problems, or if diabetes runs in your family, or if you know someone with blood sugar problems, or if you've ever heard the word "pancreas"; you should probably avoid these guys like the plague. They'll kill you.

But today I was going to be deserted by wife and children for the day, so I decided to do some Christmas baking. And what says Christmas to an ex-pat Canadian, like fresh butter tarts? So I took out Mum's butter tart recipe, got my French press going, put on Christmas with the Academy, and settled in for a baking day.

The first order of business was baking some bread. I've experimented with bread off-and-on for the last four years: I've had some success with yeast breads, but sourdough hasn't been quite so easy. I began a new sourdough starter with the dregs of some beer I made last month, and it's been doing all right. We've made a couple things with it, and last night I decided to make some bread. It was looking pretty good this morning, having fermented all night, so into the oven it went.

From Baking day

It's not amazing bread, but it's the best sourdough I've been able to make yet. I think the problem is that I'm not letting the dough rise sufficiently after I shape it into loaves. I'm pretty good about letting it rise basically as long as it takes, but once I shape it I tend to throw it into the oven. I'm going to experiment with that a little more in the future.

Bread done, it was time to make tarts. I've never made tarts before, of any kind at all. I was planning on using a muffin tin to bake them, but Ames showed me this pan:

From Baking day

I said, "Oh! I didn't know we had a tart pan."

She responded, "This isn't a tart pan."

Not wanting to betray my ignorance, I merely nodded knowingly. I have no idea what kind of pan that is, and am too embarrassed to ask.

At any rate, I took our not-a-tart-pan and started assembling tarts.

From Baking day

The first batch didn't turn out the best. I made two rookie mistakes: first, I over-filled the tarts so that the centers overflowed the shells and left a real mess on my pans.

From Baking day

Second, I let them sit too long before I tried to remove them from the pan. This meant the sugar hardened into a sort of cement, and I ended up tearing several tarts apart trying to get them out of the non-tart pan.

From Baking day

So I made another batch. This time I greased the pan, carefully measured out a smaller portion of center per tart, and removed them while they were still dangerously hot. The result: I got a decent pan of tarts.

From Baking day

From Baking day

It was frankly pretty nice to taste something so like home. I'd forgotten how great these little guys are. All told, I made something like 30 tarts, and most of them are still intact. I think I'll need to make another couple dozen before Christmas.

Butter tarts out of the way, I got working on dinner: Chicken and Pastry.

From Baking day

Yeah, today was a good day.

There's still a lot of Christmas baking to do. I've not made Stollen yet this year, and I'm planning on at least one batch of ridiculously over-caramelled cinnamon buns. And it seems like I haven't made a pie in years.

But today was a nice way to get into Christmas.

Well, I'm back

I'm back on Vancouver Island. Again.

I never come to Canada, but I have to talk myself into going back across the border.

Mt. Rainier

If you haven't spent time in this area, you might have trouble understanding the extent to which Mt. Rainier dominates the landscape. It doesn't dominate the view so much as it defines it. Ames took this picture a couple miles from the house:

From Mt. Rainier

You can see Rainier from almost anywhere here, except the house where we live: we have some tall trees right at the east end of our yard.

Rainier is about 30 or 50 miles from our house, so we decided to head on out and take a look. We didn't actually anticipate getting there, but we figured we'd head out to explore in that direction and take a look around.

There are some interesting things between us and Rainier: Alder Dam was impressive

From Mt. Rainier

We wound through several small towns and finally got to Mt. Rainier National Forest. A day pass is $15, a 12-month pass is $30. So we bought a year pass.


We never actually got to Rainier, which wasn't really a surprise. But we did manage to go for a walk in the foothills. The landscape definitely reminds me of home:

From Mt. Rainier

The "lonely road at the base of the hill" look sure takes me back to BC.

There are a lot of mushrooms on the west coast, and I ended up tagging some in photos:

From Mt. Rainier

From Mt. Rainier

It was terribly refreshing to walk in the cold damp air. That's a winter-on-the-Pacific-coast thing. We might not get a lot of snow, but the winter damp cuts like a knife. I've been out in the cold (I mean real cold, not just freezing temperatures), and it has its challenges; but there is a unique coldness to the damp air on the coast. To be sure I've never wintered in Cambridge Bay, but you get the point. Most places get dry in the winter: our winter humidity presents a unique cold.

From Mt. Rainier

Anyhow, we spent some time walking on a path that followed a creek up a foothill

From Mt. Rainier

From Mt. Rainier

The creekbed itself is bright orange, I assume that's clay washing down from deposits upstream, but I don't know for sure.

From Mt. Rainier

There were some really interesting branches along the path: trees apparently had some unique challenges in that forest:

From Mt. Rainier

From Mt. Rainier

From Mt. Rainier

We even found a hollow tree.

It wasn't an epic journey or anything, but it was certainly a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

From Mt. Rainier

Welcome home

Well, we're in our new home in the Tacoma area. The house is piled high with boxes, there is a POD in the driveway, and the kitchen is almost unusable. In other words, we're moving in.

The unload & unpack went remarkably well: the POD arrived at 7:00 AM, and it was empty by 10:00 PM. Not too bad.

I have my grill back, I re-assembled and polished it; then loaded it up for its inaugural cook: chicken leg quarters. I have a history with chicken leg quarters, it was 18 chicken leg quarters that caused the Great Fireball wherein I reduced the venturis from my gas grill into molten metal and ended up with some interesting objects:



The chicken leg quarters did very well over charcoal, and turned out not too badly. But I still have deep respect for chicken leg quarters.

A friend told me yesterday that Anthony Bourdain summed up the Pacific Northwest with "obsession". A quick Google search suggests that's true, but I've been unable to find the original quote. Nevertheless, it is an extremely apt description.

I don't think Vancouver Island is characteristically obsessive---certainly not like Seattle or Tacoma---there is a very different culture and sense there.

But at least in the Puget Sound and Olympic Peninsula areas, obsession is rife. Ames and I travelled down to Tacoma from the Island for some business a couple weeks ago, via the BlackBall Ferry, which runs between Victoria, BC and Port Angeles, WA. Port Angeles is a very interesting town---I regret it's so close to home, as I'll likely only ever go through it, rather than stopping and exploring it. One thing one notices about Port Angeles is, every restaurant---without exception---advertises "Espresso". You see signs "Soup and Espresso," "Burgers and Espresso"... the combinations get quite interesting. Even here in the Tacoma area, we've seen a stand advertising "Hot Dogs and Espresso".

The cliche that there is a Starbuck's on every corner isn't far off. One intersection a few miles from the new house has a Starbuck's, an independent coffee shop, and a grocery store advertising an in-store Starbuck's kiosk. Literally all on one intersection. Every strip mall seems to have an espresso stand (generally not part of a chain) in the parking lot in addition to coffee shops (Starbuck's or otherwise) in the mall itself. A couple of the espresso stands have prominent signs advertising they're open 24 hours. Because you never know when you'll need an espresso at 3:00 AM...

These people are obsessed.

And the coffee obsession is not unique. There are at least a dozen teriyaki restaurants within 6 miles of our new house. Teriyaki and noodles, teriyaki and burgers... if you can eat it, you can find a place that serves it and teriyaki within ten miles of our place.

But despite the gentle laughs we've had at our new home and its residents, I'm honestly enjoying my time here. I have to admit I moved here somewhat reluctantly---I was wanting to be a good deal further north and less urban than where I am---but I am thoroughly pleased with our new city.

We'll be taking pictures and so on soon, but we're still in the throes of moving, so both my loyal readers will have to wait.

Canadian Geography Lesson