Christmas Gift Guide - All Hail the Luxury Consumable!

I love giving gifts. To get to think about how much I like someone and what I could do or give them that would bring them some joy is the best. It was actually when my gift-giving skills started failing a couple years ago that made me realize I'd reached a pretty high level of burnout, because I was forgetting to be thoughtful and phoned in a wedding gift for a friend I cared deeply about. This won't do, I said, and make some drastic changes in my life which led us all here together to this very post.

I know for many people, gift giving is very hard and not enjoyable, a "just tell me what to buy you" experience. There is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes people (like me all too often) say "I don't need anything" or "I already have too much stuff" etc etc. This is where the Luxury Consumable will save you!

One can almost never go wrong when gifting a Luxury Consumable - i.e. something that by its very nature is not meant to be "kept" (e.g. food or toiletries) but is likely a little higher-end than what someone might buy routinely. As long as you have a vague idea of whether the person you're gifting likes the general category (e.g. booze, chocolate, candles) of your gift, the Luxury Consumable is a foolproof present that works for every price point.

There is no shortage of places to obtain Luxury Consumables year-round in Saskatoon - The Saskatoon Farmers' Market (only in the downtown location until December 22), SaskMade MarketPlace (now with a Midtown location), Joyne, The Better Good, Wanuskewin, Ten Thousand Villages, Saje, Bernard Callebaut, the grocery store, the list goes on. There's also a ton of Christmas pop-up markets happening over the next few weeks, which CBC has compiled a list of. Just pick a store or market, go with a general idea and budget in mind, and I guarantee you'll find the right gift.

Some of my favourite luxury consumables with a local flavour:

• Chocolate from Those Girls at the Market - still taking Christmas box pre-orders, I think
• There is no shortage of excellent locally produced specialty booze in Sask (multiple links here)
• Or if you want to gift a tasty and bubbly non-alcoholic beverage, Parkerview Brews has really perfected their craft
• I got an Alauna Whelan candle in a silent auction at the Third + Bird market and I love it, expensive but very nice and lightly scented with essential oils only
• Everyone needs soap! Soap Cutts has several scented just with essential oils too which are safer to gift if you aren't sure if someone is scent-sitive
• Lots of independent coffee roasters around, my favourite is Caliber out of Regina even though I have to get it shipped to Saskatoon
• While we don't agree on certain transportation planning initiatives in Saskatoon, McQuarrie's is still a great place to buy loose tea in Saskatoon
• My former curling teammate Kevin of Saskatoon Spruce has Christmas cheese boxes this year, his business and story is very cool
• I also love the chevre (goat cheese) from Red Barn Dairy but best to buy right before you gift because it doesn't last forever
• Kitako Lake Honey is some of the best honey I've ever tasted and I'm not just mentioning it because Steven is my cousin-in-law (is that a thing?)

However - you don't have to go to a specialty market to find something great! Last time I was in Shoppers Drug Mart they had giant higher-end dark chocolate bars (PC brand) on sale for four bucks. Unless one is allergic to chocolate I can't imagine not loving such a gift, and never guessing it was only four dollars. Grocery store gifts are HIGHLY underrated yet nearly always appreciated.

Joining a Book Club

Until about grade six, I was the weird kid to only wanted to read all the time. As I got into my teen years, I prioritized having friends/not getting bullied so I didn’t read as much anymore, and into adulthood kind of went through phases where I’d buy a bunch of books and read for a while, and then not read for a stretch of quite a few months. A few years ago a library opened up within walking distance of my house, and I have been reading a LOT ever since. 

It turns out, you can get books for free?! as long as you bring them back eventually. You don't have to be a slave to Amazon and shell out 30 bucks for a paperback (or a few megabytes) you might not finish or like! What a concept. The library is the best. Please, take all of my tax dollars. On average, I probably get through 1.5 books a week (I’m up to 74 in 2019 as of today). Because my husband also got really into the library about a year after me, we’ve actually done some (drastic?) things like cancel Netflix in order to spend more time with books.

(The SPL also does this great thing where they tell you the value of all the books you've taken out. I'm up to $2650 in 2019 - can I read 3 grand worth of books before December 31? Challenge accepted!)

One very fun thing that has happened as a result of reading a lot is joining a book club! I was out for supper with a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time, and she mentioned Tara Westover’s Educated, which her book club had just finished reading. I’d read the book and loved it a few months before, so she invited me to come to the meeting the next evening.

It is so enjoyable to read a book and then get to talk about it with other people who also read it. And maybe the best part is it has exposed me to books I never would have picked off the shelf for myself, but am so glad to have read. And this has made me a bit more adventurous at the library, in grabbing books I haven’t vetted through the Goodreads reviews beforehand (which has worked out well... most of the time).

I think there is some sort of joke out there that “book club” is a euphemism/excuse for getting out of the house and drinking wine. While the quorum at the meetings of my book club generally have finished the book, one is also always welcome to come listen to spoilers and have a visit even if they didn’t read it. It is just a very nice and wholesome grownup activity, where the beverage of choice is usually herbal tea so that we can all still get to bed at a reasonable hour. Being a grownup is great!

One cool thing that the Saskatoon Public Library offers is public book clubs, so if you don’t have a friend with a ready-made book club to join you can sign up and join the monthly discussion. It’s a free activity with a lot of potential benefits, and the worst thing that could happen is not liking the book. I like those odds!

Cooking with Animal Fats

I had a long-winded draft of this post written and I really hated it so I'm just going to get right down to it: animal fats are very good for cooking with!

Growing up when margarine was still considered healthy, even the word "lard" was enough to induce gagging when we heard it as kids, though I didn't really know what it even was - it just sounded gross. But fast forward into adulthood where I started saving the bacon fat for frying eggs, which turned out to be a gateway.

I don't like the strong smell of beef tallow so I rarely use it unless I have some extra from making soup, but pork lard and chicken fat (chicken fat is commonly referred to as "schmaltz") are

Lard actually doesn't have much of a flavour (you could use it in sweet applications like pie crust), but schmaltz is definitely very chickeny which is great especially if you're browning onions etc. to eventually use in soup with a chicken broth base. Baked oven fries or hashbrowns are very, very good when you use animal fat. I am definitely prone to bastardize classically vegan dishes like falafel by frying in pork lard.

I cook a lot of vegetarian meals which can be made to taste richer when the base fat is chicken or pork. Animal fat also has a much higher smoke point than vegetable fat which means you are less likely to burn things if you are sauteeing/frying/roasting at high heat. It also makes whatever you're cooking MUCH crispier and (in my opinion) less greasy than vegetable fat frying.

I am not against vegetable oils, which have their place, but I am definitely over using extra virgin olive oil as the base for everything. Olive oil tastes like olives, folks. Not everything needs to taste like olives!

It is easy-ish to collect small amounts of animal fat from your cooking to use later but only if you are doing things like homemade stock on a regular basis. I wouldn't buy it from the grocery store because I've heard, for example, that lard sold for pie crust purposes has been altered a bit to make it more solid. Luckily in Saskatoon (and most of Saskatchewan) it's not too difficult to come by a variety of simply rendered animal fats from very cleanly and humanely raised animals. Cool Springs Ranch sells pork, beef, and chicken fat for about $9/litre through their monthly pickup program and I will vouch for the great quality and flavour. While I haven't purchased from them, Farm One Forty(/Odla Restaurant) also sells pork lard and I'd assume it to be of similar quality. I'd guess some of the health food stores probably carry animal fats from local producers, but don't go driving around the city on my assumption only.

We have been using animal fats pretty regularly in our home cooking for several years. While I'm not here to defend it nutritionally, I haven't found it to be "bad for me" in any measurable quantity. What it does do very obviously is improve the quality of our homemade meals!

Tomato Pie

I have been thinking I need to write a post about tomatoes for a while and then realized that would be a silly endeavour as I could honestly start an entire separate blog about how much I love tomatoes. So, here is a decidedly unseasonal post about one of my favourite things to do with home grown tomatoes, written wistfully while the last of my 2019 San Marzanos ripen on the counter. 

I have been following the blog (upgraded in recent years from blog to “site”) Simply Recipes for years, and the recipe for Tomato Pie caught my eye several summers ago. I have made it multiple times a summer ever since, starting with store bought crust, sometimes using a hollowed out summer squash or zucchini instead of pie crust, and this year finally evolving the recipe into a true labour of love (and multi-hour project) with a homemade crust. It's sort of like deep dish pizza, except if deep dish pizza was actually pie, i.e. the best thing ever.

The recipe as-written makes a pretty darn good pie but when you make a recipe so many times it’s inevitable to find a few ways to improve it. I also never got a fully baked pie crust by only pre-baking for 25 minutes as written; it needs at least 45.

I have and likely will never make this out of season. I’m sure it would turn out just lovely using greenhouse tomatoes, but as with many recipes I associate with summer (beet borscht is another one), it just feels a bit sacrilegious to make if I haven’t grown most of the ingredients myself. It would probably also stop feeling like a special treat if I started making it year round, and that just won’t do.

We are so lucky in Saskatchewan to have long summer days that are perfect for tomato growing and I am addicted to growing fun and fanciful varieties and figuring out how to best use them. Example - look how cute my tiny Spoon tomatoes are on top of a tomato pie! Spoon tomatoes are some of the smallest you can grow and apparently the closest you can get to The Original Tomato, but they are annoying to pick, not especially flavourful (but decent), and a lot of work for a few handfuls of tomatoes but just LOOK HOW CUTE AND PRETTY. They are about as whimsical as a tomato can get and they make me very happy. I am not ashamed to say that I grew them this year specifically to make pretty food.

Bonus because this post is low on pictures, here they are peeking out of a Greek salad:

Here is my recipe for tomato pie, adapted from Simply Recipes. I’m not going to pretend it’s a particularly simple weeknight dinner. While none of the steps are difficult, it does take a while but it’s worth every minute. If you love tomatoes you won't be sorry.

Time: Approximately 3 hours from start to finish if you're making your own crust, but only about 1 hour of actual hands-on time

Serves: Realistically, 3-4 people as a main course

Ingredients:

1 9-inch pie shell (I follow the combo butter/shortening recipe here but use bacon fat instead of shortening)

Cooking fat of your choice (I like bacon fat, olive oil is fine)

½ cup chopped sweet onion

1-2 garlic cloves, pressed

Pepper to taste

1 cup of chopped beet leaves, swiss chard, or other greens

3 cups of chopped, salted, and squeezed tomatoes (see original recipe if my directions don't make sense, I use an old fashioned potato ricer. Do not skip the squeezing unless you are using extremely low-moisture tomatoes)

2 tbsp cornstarch

¼ cup chopped basil

1 cup mozzarella cheese, grated

¼ cup mayonnaise

A few dashes of hot sauce of your choice (green Cholula, or Tapatio works well)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Cover the pie crust in foil and fill with pie weights. Bake for 45 minutes.

Liberally salt the chopped tomatoes. Don't worry about using too much, a lot of it will drain off. Let sit for at least 10 minutes. 

While the crust is baking, brown the onions in the oil/fat. Add garlic and greens and cook until greens are wilted.

Squeeze as much liquid as you can out of the salted tomatoes (but you don't have to go nuts, the cornstarch will take care of whatever you leave). Mix the tomatoes, contents of your frying pan, basil, as much pepper as you feel is necessary, and cornstarch together.

Mix the cheese, mayo, and hot sauce together.

Remove the foil from the crust (don’t throw it out yet) and put in the tomato filling. Top with the cheese mixture. Top with extra tomatoes if you wish (make sure they are low moisture so you don’t end up with soggy topping).

Bake for about 45 minutes or until you see the filling bubbling. Let sit for about 10 minutes before cutting. If the crust starts browning too much, cover with the leftover foil.

If you have leftovers do yourself a favour and reheat them in the oven, not the microwave.

Reminder that this filling/topping is also excellent in a zucchini boat, if you are avoiding carbs or have a giant zucchini to use up.