fireworks
summer panic, outdoor movies, and making muffins without making muffins
Hello, friends. How are we all feeling about the fact that it’s July? This is usually when I start looking at the weekends ahead and start to realise that many of them are already full up with events, and then I begin panicking about how quickly the summer’s going to go by. Am I having enough fun? Am I going to do all the things I want to do before it gets cold and rainy again?
It’s hard to get over the mindset of youth, when summertime is your own to do as you please, to do all the things you wanted to do when it was too dark or not nice enough outside or you were too busy. But even though most of us have no more or less free time in the summer than at any other time of year, it’s still a time we tend to anticipate and cherish for giving us more sunlight, more energy, more fresh food, more warmth. We’ve had a very temperate (one might even say cold) June, and while I will always be glad for more rain, I’m also ready for some outdoor days where I don’t have to hem and haw over whether to bring a jacket.
The Stanley Cup final already feels like it happened ages ago, and it was honestly such a letdown after all that buildup. As a Canucks fan I could not root for the Oilers, but having the Panthers win also didn’t feel very good? The play was largely unexciting to watch, particularly for a game seven after the Oilers came back from a 3-0 deficit in the series— I joked that the nachos I made for us to eat in front of the tv were more interesting than what happened on the ice. Anyway, here’s a fun fact, in case you believe in curses: Roberto Luongo is the only person who played for the Canucks in the 2011 final to have hoisted a cup. Depressing, but, good job, Lu.
I went out to Lower Lonsdale a couple of times recently to meet up with friends. Jane and I met for a beer at House of Funk, where she’d taken part in a brewing workshop put on by the Bad Academy semi-recently— go try the Bad Witch pale ale there if you get a chance. Later we went to Cerveceria Astilleros for another round and some tacos. Their salted lime and grapefruit lagers are both perfect beers for this time of year.
Amanda and I each got the grapefruit lager when went back there before heading over to watch Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains which was showing to kick off Deckchair Cinema last Thursday. It was pouring rain all day and we were worried it might get rained out, and although it was cooler than you’d probably want it to be for an outdoor movie, the evening stayed clear. And there were plenty of seats, presumably because the iffy weather kept people away. I’d never seen the movie before, but it’s a fun one about punk rock starring Diane Lane and Laura Dern. Notably, it was filmed in Vancouver in the 80s, so all the locals get to get excited over seeing landmarks like The Penthouse or the old Coquitlam Centre food court. Next week, they’re showing Stop Making Sense which I’m excited about, since I didn’t get the chance to see when it was in theatres a little while ago. I imagine we’ll have to get there a lot earlier in order to get a good seat for that one.
Once a week or so I’m alone at home for dinner, and on those days it’s a bit harder to be motivated to cook the kind of meal I’ll cook on other days. It feels more important to feed others well than to feed myself well— not a mindset I’m proud to have, but I’m working on it. I also feel the need to luxuriate in being home alone in the evening, which manifests in various ways: maybe baking something (usually an afternoon activity), maybe doing some writing (usually I try not to come back to the computer after dinner), maybe sitting on the porch with a book or watching something Jeff isn’t interested in. For dinner, then, I tend to choose something that won’t leave me with a lot of dishes, or something I can make reflexively. Often I’ll eat leftovers, or make some instant noodles and put them in a sauce of chili crisp and sesame paste (or this sauce, which is almost always in my fridge) with some cucumber or carrot on top, or just throw together a sandwich or quesadilla.
Last week, I had a yam and some potatoes from the dollar rack that needed to be used, so I chopped them up for a hash. Rather than having to keep an eye on them while pan-frying, I roasted them tossed with a little coriander, cumin, and paprika until they were mostly cooked, then finished them in a cast iron with some onion, jalapeño, and bell pepper, and some vegan chorizo. Brown mushrooms would also be good in place of the sausage, dry rubbed with the same spices as the root veg before cooking them in the pan with the onion. I broke the yolk while cooking the egg, which was sad, but the hash still turned out really good. I ate everything with hot sauce, cilantro, and sour cream.
The irony that we no longer have a garden just as I was just starting to get a good repertoire of ways to use up a wealth of zucchini (without getting sick of it) isn’t lost on me. Luckily it’s still cheap and widely available wherever I go from June to September, so I can just pick some up when the mood strikes me. I made the zucchini butter pasta that we fell in love with a summer or two ago. It’s ridiculously good because butter makes everything good, and it’s something you can kind of throw on the stove and leave for a bit while the shredded zucchini cooks down, so I like it when my focus is elsewhere. I almost always add chopped kalamata olives to this in the last phase of cooking, a couple minutes before adding the noodles.
Also around this time of year I start to get excited about tomatoes again, and another easy pasta is one from Milk Street: Tuesday Nights that doesn’t actually have tomatoes in the recipe, but I always add them to make the dish a little more substantial and fresh-tasting. The sauce is a brown butter infused with sumac, tomato paste, garlic, and fresh oregano, mixed up with a lemon zested yogurt with more fresh herbs (mint and parsley to go with the oregano). So it’s sort of in between a pasta salad and a warm pasta. I like cherry or grape tomatoes cut in half for this, but a diced regular tomato works too.
When I’m feeling uninspired, I like to flip through my cookbooks and wait for something to jump at me, but the ‘popular right now’ section on Smitten Kitchen is also super helpful in that respect. These recipes tend to correspond with what she’s shared recently on instagram, and usually they’ll be things that make use of what’s in season, or would be appealing at this time of year. Anyway, I made something inspired by this bean salad that turned out really good. I’d gotten a bag of mixed bell peppers on sale, so I roasted two of those and a jalapeño instead of a poblano (it’s what I had), which gave it a lightly spicy edge that I really enjoyed. I don’t know if this is characteristic of hot peppers in general, but in my experience jalapeños tend to release their heat more after cooking, even though raw they tend to be pretty mild.
Radicchio was too expensive, and the cabbages at the produce store were too big for me to want to commit, but I’d already bought a leaf lettuce to put onto veggie burgers, so I used the crisp hearts from that and it was still pretty good, though something with a little bitterness as well as the crunch factor would have been even better, since the peppers are so sweet, but the acidic elements of the dressing helped balance that, too.
The salad didn’t use all the roasted pepper, so we put some on pizza, and used some to make shakshuka. I know I’ve written about shakshuka before, but basically it’s a tomato and pepper stew that you poach eggs in at the end and can eat with bread. This was a bit more saucy and less chunky than I usually like it, because I was trying to use up some puréed tomatoes rather than chopping fresh ones like I normally do, but it’s good either way. We had some of the fresh taftoon from Amir Bakery to eat with this, but I also love it with crusty sourdough or warm pita bread. One day I will remember that the tops of poached eggs always look underdone to me, and on that day I will stop overcooking the bottoms and use a torch on the little bits of white that aren’t cooked. Sadly this was not that day, but the yolks weren’t cooked solid, which is an improvement over some past attempts!
Finally this week, I baked this blueberry muffin loaf, because I’d been thinking about the blueberry-lemon muffins this recipe is based on for a couple of weeks and kept forgetting to actually buy blueberries, and then happened to see this while browsing around and it felt like fate. I love this, because while muffins make a nice individual little serving, they’re also kind of a pain in the ass to make. The muffin tin definitely ranks high on the list of ‘worst dishes to wash’, somewhere behind the box grater and the sieve, so being able to enjoy the experience of eating a delicious muffin without having to fuss around with either the tray liners or washing the pan after is very appealing.
The batter is very thick, as the recipe warns you it will be, so try not to overwork it. My batter looked alarmingly purple as I was spreading it into the pan, so I was a bit concerned that I had, but it came out beautifully risen (and not purple, so maybe I’ll chalk that up to using frozen berries). The recipe also warns you that three tablespoons is going to look like way too much turbinado sugar as you’re sprinkling it over the batter in the pan— I certainly thought so (my instinct would have been to stop after 2). It is not. The crunch of it contrasts perfectly with the tender loaf and juicy berries. We have a lot of blackberries in the freezer from last summer, too, so maybe I’ll try it next with those.
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with someone new! I like providing this to you for free, but it does still involve time and effort, so any donations, especially while I’m still looking for work, are greatly appreciated. Lastly, to any readers in the UK, congratulations on your election results!