WARMTH IN THE COLD STREETS, & A RECIPE

Still clear and cold here, with slanting sun that warms in the middle hours of the day, but only a little!

I've had a cold for the last week or so, a completely predictable consequence of flying to Toronto from Thailand at this cold- and flu-season time of year. Finally yesterday, Christmas morning, I felt light enough in myself to head out for a small jog. What a treat.

I headed out late, at about 9.30, for it took me awhile to assemble a cold-weather outfit. In the end I unearthed odd bits of ancient clothing: I had on green wind pants with cotton tights under, and a ratty silk long sleeved undershirt topped by a windbreaker; over that I layered a funky bright red vest I bought ages ago in France, and on my head a purple wool hat. A neighbour who saw me at the end of my run, sweaty and messy, said "the Christmas jogger!" so like an overdecorated Christmas tree did I look, in my red and green and every other colour combo.

The run felt easy (the first one after a break often does feel (deceptively) easy). Sidewalks were dry with only a few little patches of ice. There was dry cold snow on the grassy areas in the university, but only a little, so the grass showed through in patches.

There was no-one around, hardly a car on the road, and all shops were closed. The only people I met were the occasional person walking a dog, two other joggers, and a couple of people riding bicycles (brr!!). I called out "happy Christmas" to everyone. Some had headphones on, or were otherwise tuned out, but most greeted me back. I felt as if we had a special task to assert warmth of feeling in the cold air and bare streets.

When I got to Kensington Market, all deserted, I came across four or five different solitary guys. Each was hunched into himmself, alone-looking. I was reminded that when you are alone on a holiday day, when you have no family or friends around, and perhaps nowhere safe to stay, the big holidays are bleak indeed. And that's even more true on a cold day when everything is closed.

But on Baldwin Street in Kensington Market I finally came on a place that was open, a small independent coffee shop. "Espresso Bar: All Day Breakfast" it said on the outside. I went in, not because I wanted a coffee (I needed to keep moving to get home; I thought if I stopped I wouldn't be able to pick up and keep running afterward), but just to say hello and thank-you to the young women who'd opened for business, giving people a place they could go for company and warmth. We chatted briefly, and then as I headed back out, in through the door came one of the lonely street guys. "Coffee?" "Yes please" he said with feeling.

The rest of my day, once I reached home, was lived in warmth and comfort, starting with a hot bath, then cleaning and cooking, then welcoming friends and feasting on all that they and we had prepared. I was grateful to have had my morning out, a chance to move my body and take in lungfuls of fresh air, a chance to see the city stripped of its busy-ness for once, and a reminder not to take anything for granted...

I hope your week, the lovely blank of time between Chritmas and new Years, is rich with friends and new horizons.

And in case you are still in the mood for cooking something sweet for yourself or for friends, here's another easy recipe for a biscotti-like treat, adapted from a recipe in HomeBaking, a book I worked hard on and now find especially useful in wintertime! This recipe is for paximadia, Greek twice-cooked breads, but these are sweet, a Cretan version of paximadia, made with olive oil and flavoured with wine and spices. Very simple to make, very easy to eat, so though in theory they keep well, you won't have a storage issue!!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit and place a rack in the centre. Put out a large baking sheet. In a bowl stir together 1 cup of olive oil (preferably Greek) with 3/4 cup sugar (I like using demerara, for fun). Add the remaining ingredients and stir them in: 1/4 cup wine (white or red) and 2 tablespoons orange juice; 1 teaspoon each cinnamon and ground cloves; 1/2 teaspoon each baking powder and baking soda; and 3 cups all-purpose flour.

You'll have a pasty moist dough, a little crumbly. Turn it onto a work surface; cut it into four equal pieces. Shape each into a long flat loaf about 3/4 inch high, three inches across and eight or so inches long. Transfer to the baking sheet, lining them up side by side but not touching. With a knife or dough scraper make parallel cuts crosswise on each loaf, about 1/3 to 1/2 inch apart, and cutting down almost right through the loaf.

Place in the oven and bake for about 40 minutes, until firm. Take out and let cool for fifteen minutes, lower heat to 250, and cut through each slice mark to make individual cookies. Lay them on their sides (on one cut side in other words) and place back in the oven to bake for about 20 minutes, until very firm and dried out.

Let cool completely on a rack before storing in a cookie tin or jar.

I like dunking these in red wine, or eating them with a strong cheddar. They make a good house present too.

SWEET PLEASURES IN A COLD SEASON

How can it be a week since I last posted here? The answer's simple. After any long trip, there's the whirling messiness of landing: jetlag, of course, and then a sore throat-cold-cough combo that lingers, and bills and mail and banking to sort through, and trip notes and photos to start sorting through... And at Christmas time there are more than the usual number of post-trip drop-ins and phone calls and lunch and supper bookings with friends and extended family. Everyone seems to have a party or get-together in this season. It's kind of dizzying.

Last night I was out at a friendly relaxed pleasurable tenth anniversary party at Lula Lounge, a world-music venue and comfortable bar on Dundas West here in Toronto. I walked home from there, about three miles, in the clear cold night, wearing running shoes for comfort, and walking on sidewalks occasionally dusted with a little snow but mostly bare and easy. It was a good decision, to walk. It grounded me and brought me securely into the "now" for the first time since I landed here nearly a week ago.

This morning I woke with a pretty clear head and contemplated my to-do list. it's fairly elastic, but includes decision-making about which of the things I brought back from Burma and Thailand will go to which people as presents, calling several friends and my aunts who live far away to touch base, and getting some work done. We all know what won't get reached. Right. The work! And that's as it should be.

It is so important, after all, to take time out and focus on the "soft" things which are in the end the essentials. For me that means unhurried time for conversation and connection with people near and dear, and with new people too; and meditative time, when I can let my mind drift.

Some of that mind-drifting was happening yesterday as I was baking. Yes, of course, that can work fine, especially when I'm kneading a bread dough for example, but is a little risky when there are cookies in the oven! No catastrophes to report this time, I'm happy to tell you.

I wanted to set out here in short form the easiest recipe, and always a success, for "Mandel Melbas", thin twice-baked cookies in the biscotto tradition, a recipe I was given by my dear friend Dina, whose mother's it was.

You will need 1 cup of toasted whole almonds, so if yours are raw, just toast them in a hot skillet until they are aromatic, and don't let them burn, then set aside. Preheat the oven to 350 and grease and dust with flour a large (9 by 5 or so) bread pan. You'll also need two baking sheets later on.

Beat four large or extra-large eggs together with three-quarters cup of sugar and then stir in one and a half cups all-purpose flopur to make a smooth batter. You can add a half teaspoon almond extract if you want; I never do. Stir in the almonds, then pour or spoon the batter into the bread pan. Bake in the centre of the oven until lightly browned, about 40 minutes (and do the skewer test to make sure the "cake" is cooked through). Let stand ten minutes, then take from the pan and let cool. Wrap in foil or plastic and freeze for an hour or so.

Set your oven to 300, slice the "loaf" very thinly (6 to 8 slices per inch) and lay the slices on the two baking sheets. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until firm and lightly touched with brown.

This is where you must not let your mind drift too much, or they will burn!

A lot of my batch this week got eaten the first day, but really they are even better after they've had a day to crisp up, delicate and beautiful.

Happy holiday times to you all...

I'm off to meet a friend for lunch. Such a treat.

PS: And speaking of distractions this week, how about that lovely big solstice full moon. Amazing, and even more that she was eclipsed and then re-emerged to light the western sky as dawn was breaking here...

LIFE IN LIMBO AND BEYOND...WITH OATCAKES

I’m in the latest version of limbo. That is, I am at the airport, having checked in online, gone through US immigration, dropped off my small (checked) bag that in earlier times would have been easy light hand-carry, passed through airport security, had my boots polished by the shoe-shine guy, passed through secondary security (a pat-down and detailed search), and now find myself with two hours to kill before the flight leaves. Yikes!

All this should be good for train travel. The cushion we now need to leave before a flight means that even this short hop to New York from Toronto will take me about eight hours door to door. Yes, of course I could have been less cautious about the time I allowed for all the security, but why risk it? At least I have a book and my laptop, so I can get work done or other wise distract myself.

In earlier times, pre cell phones or pre telephones at all, people put in long waits and just assumed that travel took time. With no way of phoning to change a plan or let people know you’d been delayed, you made extra-sure to be on time, leaving cushions for weather delays or transport problems.

With telephones and now especially with cell phones and Blackberries and i-phones etc, we’ve moved into an era that kind of mirrors the way in which manufacturing is now organised in many companies. It’s called Just in time ordering. Instead of keeping inventory in case they receive an order, companies instead hold off manufacturing a product (a car or a fridge or stove, say) until they receive an order for it.

Some years ago I was in Greenwood Mississippi, home of Viking, the maker of high-end and thoughtfully designed stoves and fridges, when I first heard the just in time concept explained. It makes good sense to not have resources tied up in products until they are ordered and paid for. But it also assumes that the manufacturing will go smoothly and quickly, and most of all it shifts any waiting or delay onto the consumer. Instead of the manufacturer waiting for orders, it’s the customer who must wait until the product is made and delivered.

And the cell-phone analogy? Well if I can call you and fine tune the when and where of our ten o’clock coffee date, then I will be more casual about being there on time, and I think I’ll be sloppier generally about making sure I don’t inconvenience you. Young people, who have grown up in this last-minute decisions and changing-arrangements world operate so differently. They take the flexibility for granted; the just-in-time last-minute arrangements are normal life to them.

So how will that impatient generation handle this long-delay universe of line-ups and unpredictable airport delays and hassles? I guess they’ll distract themselves by spending more time on the phone as they wait. But they may also opt out: Who wants to be a hostage to an unpredictable and coercive schedule? Who wants to lose hours in waiting?

Perhaps we’ll end up with better train travel, if this era of high security continues... or maybe we’ll all slip into taking mobility less for granted. That will mean perhaps more car trips, and train travel, and less plane travel. So is all this going to mean that the carbon footprint of those who have in the past taken air travel for granted as an easy right will shrink? There’s a consoling thought!

It’s an interesting example of unintended consequences, perhaps. Or, put another way, maybe it’s a confirmation of the saying my friend Arlene told me yesterday, when we met for a ten am coffee, punctually, as is our way: the bad, however bad, always always has some positive effect too ...

And speaking of positive: We all so loved the oatcakes I made over the holidays that I made another batch. Last night we all kept nibbling on them and the pile shrank a little. It seemed a good thing to still be eating sweets and feeling festive, for last night was Christmas Eve for members of the Ethiopian and Egyptian Coptic Churches, as well as followers of the Eastern (Orthodox) rites of Greece, Russia, Serbia, etc, and for western Christians, it was Epiphany, the day that celebrates the coming of the magi. In Barcelona on January 5 there’s a Wise Men procession, complete with camels, through the streets to enchant children and adults alike.

Here we shovel snow and return to school and tend to forget about these things. But on our street is a Russian Orthodox church (used as the church in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, incidently), so we are always reminded of Christmas Eve. Last night the street was packed with cars until late, and the church filled with dressed-up worshippers. And inside our house, we were talking and happy and sustained by oatcakes and loving warmth.

NOTE ON OATCAKES: There's a recipe in HomeBaking, but if you don't have a copy, here's how to make them:

Use rolled oats, 2 cups, and pulse them in the food processor until ground more finely (alternatively you can start with 2 cups steel-cut oats).

Add 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 cup light brown sugar, 1 cup whole wheat flour (I use Red Fife) and 1 cup all-purpose, and process to blend. Cut a half-pound (225 grams) cold butter into small chunks and add, then process until it is blended into fine crumbs.
Stir a teaspoon baking soda into 1 cup hot water. Start the processor (or stir it in a large bowl) and pour in the hot water, processing or stirring as you add the water. Stop once a ball of dough forms and all the dry ingredients are thoroughly moistened.

Turn the (now-sticky and soft) dough out onto a floured surface and knead a little to pull it together. Put in a plastic bag and refrigerate for one hour or as long as three days. (The dough firms up to a stiff mass as the butter solidifies in the cold.)

Heat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit with a rack above centre and another below centre. Lightly butter two bakng sheets. Cut the dough into four equal pieces.
Lightly flour your work surface. Press one piece of dough flat with the heel of one hand, then roll it out with a rolling pin until thin and relatively even.

Transfer the dough to a baking sheet and then use a pizza cutter to divide it into squares. (You can instead cut out rounds with a cookie cutter or fine-edged glass, rerolling scraps as needed; this dough doesn't get noticeably tough even when rerolled.) Place in the oven and bake for about fifteen minues. Repeat with the remaining three pieces of dough.

When the oatcakes are done they will still be pale on top but will be firm underneath. Transfer them to a rack to cool and set (a wide spatula is the best tool for this job). When they have completely cooled and firmed up, store in a wax- or parchment paper-lined tin or tins.

Delicious on their own or with a sharp cheese... at any time of day or night.