A secret thing, a cookbook round-up and more

A while ago, someone posted photos on a neighbourhood group, showing this amazing stump carving in Stanley Park. It's called the Two Spirits sculpture. They gave vague directions, and of course since it was a neighbourhood group on Facebook there was lots of squabbling about whether one should share the secret or not. It's not really that much of a secret; it's mentioned in Wikipedia, after all. 

It is actually quite close to one of the big trails in the woods. Turn right at the stump, cross the boggy bit, and here you are: 

It is huge and very impressive. 

There are meant to be two faces. Did the right-hand one suffer some damage, I wonder, or am I missing something? 

Someone painted some of it at one time. This is not part of the original work, but I like it! Vandalism or more art?

Nature's painting...

We take our leave. 

On our way out through the park we came across this amazing camellia. It stopped us in our tracks, I tell you!

Later this week we are taking a bit of a trip to Vancouver Island and points west, so I had to return the New Basics to the library. When we get back it will be March, and on to a new cookbook! 

I don't think I told you about the rice and beets salad I made, which was excellent. I used shallots instead of red onions and green onions instead of chives, and didn't use any red peppers. The dressing is really good and I do enjoy beets. So all around great! The book is certainly staying on my shelf; Stephen and I both liked everything and there are tons more recipes I'd like to try. 

Next month's book is Parties for all Seasons, a Culinary Arts Institute book from 1976 that I picked up somewhere. It's cute and kitschy but I'm not sure how useful it will turn out to be. There seems to be about five versions of blue cheese dip or dressing; must investigate more thoroughly. 

There will also be a new photo theme! More on that later.

I probably won't take my laptop with me, and I never did learn to blog on my phone, so I won't be around here for a bit. You can always find me on Instagram, where I am @square.mary

See you in March!

Some bike pictures

Many pictures today, mainly taken while I was out walking. I like having this idea always in the back of my mind, that I should be on the lookout for bikes. 

Stanley Park is a great place for a bike, and there are always super-dooper, spandex-clad guys on racing bikes going by, sixty-year-olds out for a bit of a ride, families with kids, and those dang tourists on tandems!

A tandem is good for lots of things, but it's a good idea if you both know how to ride a bike. They are trickier than they look and although I have had a romantic tandem ride or two in my day, I must say, not for some decades. 

In any case, you can rent a tandem by the hour by the entrance to the park. Good luck!

There are lots of bike routes on the roads, but this is an old railway line; one side is for wheeled things and the other is for pedestrians. It is quite long, from the river on the south to False Creek in the north, more or less. Because it is a train route, there are no really steep bits, although it does go up and down. 

Of course, it crosses streets and streets cross it and there are bikes and people and cars involved, so there must be signage. 

Pedestrians go both ways on the right, bikes go both ways on the left. You can see the shadow of a car on the street in the top left. People do tend to obey the lane system, which is good. The main problem is that on a nice day everyone thinks, "Oh, that walking and biking path, let's go!" and so you have the zooming folk and the kids learning to ride and those who stride briskly and those pushing a wheelchair, all on the same path. Obviously we need more of these!

This helpful sign is on the Cambie St bridge. It was a gloomy day, but not wet. Nice way to show a skidding bike, I guess!

This one says, "Push the button and cross the road." One day I will collect all my button-pushing signs, because they are not all the same. Some of them have just a bike; this one has a rider. 

I was actually taking a picture of the concrete architecture and the silly "plaza" below sidewalk level, but of course the coil in front is a bike rack. This is the courthouse, and one day I'll go take more pictures of the West Coast concrete and greenery all around there. 

As I have said, there are lots of bike paths on the city streets. There are clear markings like this one, so you know that this cross street is a proper bike route. This is perhaps not very exciting, but such a change from Toronto's attitude to bikes!

They do try to be clear about what is going on. You can see the old bike painted here, but then someone decided that even though it is just a little way, perhaps clearer signs were needed. This is, I believe, an entrance to a little parkette in the West End, where it looks like you are going off the road. (These parkettes have a whole interesting story of their own. One day...)

More traffic calming. The cars can't go here, but we'll let the bikes through. No one has felt the need to paint a yellow line down the middle of this path. Yet. 

Sometimes you just have to walk your bike. This is from a place on the Stanley Park seawall where there is a playground, washrooms, food concession... just get off your bike and walk! 

I have actually knit a tiny bit. My elbow was hurting and I stopped for a week or two, but I am trying again. Let's see what happens!

 

One of my reasons

I have owned the New Basics cookbook for years, probably almost since it came out, yet I have never noticed the soup section. When I looked at it the other day, I pooh-pooed at the 90s-ish-ness of it. Make two creamy soups and pour them into a bowl from either side, make a lovely sight! Really?

However, some of these soup recipes seem quite enticing on their own. I long to try Beet Vichyssoise, for example. 

I made some bread (super easy, from a Company's Coming baking book I picked up at a Little Free Library) and thought we needed to have something not-very-carby to go with it, so made Broccoli and Spinach soup. 

I didn't have two big bunches of broccoli to hand, so pretended I was halving the recipe. I still put in an onion and two leeks, a carrot and six cloves of garlic. But I did use only one tomato. I started with their 4 tablespoons of butter but soon realized that was ridiculous and took half out before it melted. I used frozen spinach which seems to come in little pucks these days. A handful of spinach pucks was added. I forgot the lemon juice and added tarragon instead of the spices they suggested. 

I hesitated about making any of these soups because they all involve a blender, it seemed. Well, today I just stopped in a London Drugs to see if they had a soup blender, and indeed they did. So, although I have a perfectly good one in Toronto, I now have another one here. 

We made some turkey bacon and crumbled that in. Toasted bread made by me, a bottle of wine. Perfecto. 

Almost perfecto. It could have used that lemon juice for sure, and maybe a shot of tabasco. But it was just what we needed. 

This is why I am doing this cookbook challenge! Who knew this book contained decent soup recipes? Not me. 

Now that I have made one nice loaf of bread by hand, one might ask if we need the large bread machine that we don't really have room for here. Good question. I have two more envelopes of yeast so let's see what happens with that! Today's loaf was free-form, partly because that's what the recipe said to do, and partly because I don't have a loaf pan. But now I do have a new stick blender!

The adventure continues. Next time, bikes for sure. 

Lovely beef chili

My cousin came for dinner the other day and I made Hell's Kitchen Chili from the New Basics book. I have been making it for some years, as it is nice and simple and pretty tasty. As someone once said to a part-time vegetarian, "All dead cow and no farty beans." 

You cook an onion and some spices, then add more oil and brown the meat (my grocery didn't have stewing beef so I cut up some eye-of-the-round steaks), add a can of tomatoes and some tomato paste, some stock (I had leftover chicken in the fridge, so used that) and some back bacon or regular bacon or turkey bacon. They also want a tablespoon of sugar, but the only sugar I have around here is some packets lifted from coffee shops, so I put one of those in. I also threw in a bit of leftover rice, since I didn't have bread to go with it. Simmer it for around two hours. 

I even have a picture this time: 

Very inspiring, innit? 

We added sour cream and chopped green onions and corn chips, had a salad and a bottle of wine. My cousin's husband has recently retired and acquired an ice cream maker, so we had strawberry frozen yogurt with fresh fruit on top for dessert. Yum-o-la. 

I'll sort through some pictures and make another bicycle post soon. I am finding bicycle signage more interesting that bikes themselves! Perhaps one day I'll take pictures of spokes and handlebars, but I haven't done that yet. 

Bikes and recipes and knitting

Lots to show today, folks. 

We'll start with the bicycles. I don't own a bike here in Vancouver and use the share bikes when I need one. 

They are easy to find in this part of town, but they don't cover all of the west side across the water, so none out by the university or far into Kitsilano. 

I put my code in on the keypad, and my secret number, and the bike is unlocked from the rack. When I am done I ka-chunk it back into a rack and it is locked back up. 

There are pretty good bike paths around downtown, some separated from traffic by bollards or flower pots, and some not. This mark is just on a quiet side street and I think means, "Bikes can be here and you can't hit them with your car." 

This sign is on a path in Stanley Park and it means, "Go either way on your bike." Parts of the path are one-way, and there are almost always separate lanes:  pedestrians here and bikes there. Roller skaters and skateboarders go with the bikes. 

In cooking news, I was looking through the New Basics and marking salads and muffins, and thought I should maybe find something more to Stephen's taste, so I made Shallot Wine Sauce to go on a nice steak. The book has you cook the steak in the pan and then make the sauce in the meat juices, but we barbecued the meat and just made the sauce with butter and olive oil. It's just shallots and chives cooked in butter and wine; what could go wrong? Delicious on the meat and fine in any sort of leftover melange in the following days. 

I miss the days of casual having-friends-over-for-dinner parties. I look at these recipes that feed eight people and know that there are only the two of us here! Next week I should be having lunch with my cousin but nothing is set in stone yet and I don't want to get all menu-planny when it might turn out that we go out for lunch or something. 

In knitting news, I got a book from the library which has the pattern for my fancy mittens. I have only an old photocopy, and thought a fresh look would help kickstart a new round of work on the second mitten. We shall see. The blanket has long rows and is a bit same-old-same-old, so perhaps some high-stress fair isle in the round will be just what I need. 

Gumbo

I made Shrimp and Okra Gumbo from my Cooking Light Soups and Stews magazine. This is one of the unofficial cookbooks of February. 

My sous chef husband thought there was quite a bit of stuff to do with this, mainly because he did a lot of the chopping beforehand and one makes a roux before starting in with the rest. You cook together flour and oil, then add chicken stock, and when it is nice and thick and smooth, you just set it aside while you throw everything else in the pot. 

Onion, some ham chopped up, garlic, okra, spices and a big old can of tomatoes. Add the roux here to thicken things up, add the shrimp for a few minutes, serve. The recipe calls for green pepper and celery, but we had peas instead! 

It was really nice, light and tasty. One could serve it on rice to stretch it, and next time perhaps a dash of Tabasco would be good. 

It's Bike Month here

According to my made-up Photo Themes plan, we start Bike Month today, leaving Arch Month behind. I was worried when I was in Toronto that there wouldn't be much in the way of bikes available in February, but now I am in presently-sunny Vancouver and think I will have no trouble finding some interesting bike stuff to show you. 

We start with the bike in my very own apartment. This is a Christmas ornament I bought last November at a craft fair. It is rusty metal. I had thought I would hang it on the wall, but it actually leaves rusty dust on my windowsill as it is, and don't think I want that on my nice new paint. 

 Here it is against my blue wall. I do like that!

And here it is behind the blinds as the sun shines blindingly in through our window. Its companion there is a horse brass in the shape of the sun, or perhaps a compass rose, though it has 12 points and not 8. Let's say it's the sun. 

This is the general view of the bike on the windowsill.  Perhaps I will bring more of my horse-brass collection to fill things out. 

I will get you some bikes in the wild soon enough. 

I did suggest I had some knitting to show you. 

That is four sections of my Mohairino Medley. I guess I need about 10 or 12 sections to make a lap blanket, a thing to throw over the back of the couch. (We have a couch now, so exciting!) This will keep me occupied for some time, I imagine. The colours all look a bit of a hodgepodge, but I think it will all work out in the end. 

Next time: a recipe!