Fermenting Dairy at Home – Part 2: Yogurt

In Part 1, I talked about how kefir is a perfect, cheap substitute for yogurt in smoothies and baking, but it doesn’t quite mimic the real thing for fresh eating. If you want homemade yogurt... you have to make homemade yogurt.

I have been hearing for years how easy it is to make yogurt at home, but still it always sounded like more work than I was willing to do. Maybe the instructions I found seemed too wieldy, or maybe I didn’t have the right equipment and didn’t want to invest (which is a perfectly legitimate excuse). But eventually I realized that I did have all the right equipment at my disposal, and gave it a shot.

If you have never had homemade yogurt, and don’t have an easy opportunity to get your hands on some (in Saskatoon, Prairie Sun Orchard's homemade yogurt is available at Odla Market), go to the grocery store and buy a pack of French style yogurt. It is delicious and tastes similar to what you get in a home setup after 8-9 hours of culturing. It is also expensive and made in (locally non-recyclable) glass jars, so if you want to develop a habit of eating a lot of it, you may want to learn to make it at home.

While making yogurt has a few more steps than kefir, it’s still not very onerous. If you’re making small batches at a time (e.g. a 500 ml jar), it requires approximately 10 minutes of hands-on time.

During this 10 minutes, do the following (instructions for how to make it in a jar):

• Prep a tablespoon or so of starter culture – this can just be plain yogurt from the grocery store with no additives
• Pour milk into the jar you want to use to measure, and then pour it into a saucepan
• Heat the milk until 180F or just boiling (you don’t need to use a thermometer – just pull it off when it starts to boil)
• Cool the milk to about 110F – you can use a thermometer or a “finger test” – it should be warm, but not so warm that you can’t sustain touching it. To cool I put the pot in a bowl of ice water and whisk – 500 ml cools in about 1-2 mins
• Stir in the starter culture
• Pour the milk and culture into the jar

Culture for at least 8 hours. You can do this in an Instant Pot on the “yogurt” setting, or anywhere else you can maintain fairly constant warmth. I have heard an oven with the light on works well, likely any proofing setting your oven has, or even in a Thermos. Some websites say to just wrap the jar in a towel to hold in the heat, but I suspect those people aren't writing from somewhere that is -40. I use the Instant Pot for now but if I keep this up I’ll probably get a Thermos jar so I’m not working hidden electricity costs into my operation.

(Thick and creamy 10% yogurt! This picture is terrible! Sorry!)

If you use milk, your yogurt will be runnier than store bought. If you want it thicker you can strain the whey to make Greek style yogurt, or add a thickener like gelatin to the milk before you heat it, or follow any of the other ideas from that provided link. My method of choice is upping the fat content :D

Here are the notes on my personal experimentation over the past couple weeks of making yogurt:

• 500 mL whole milk only – 8 hours culturing – tastes good, barely tangy. Easy to eat plain. Quite runny
• 400 mL whole milk, 100 mL heavy cream – 9 hours culturing – these two dairy products are not homogenized, so the cream floated to the top during culturing and formed a skin that needed to be scraped off. Preferred the 9 hour taste, still very easy to eat plain, overall still very runny
• 400 mL whole milk, 100 mL heavy cream, ¼ tsp gelatin – same issues as above, gelatin did not make a noticeable difference
• 500 mL half and half (10% fat), ½ tsp gelatin – 9 hour culture – WINNER! It’s not quite Greek yogurt/Skyr thick, but definitely not runny, and much richer than straight milk. Will keep doing this!

Half and half isn’t cheap but goes on sale often enough that I should be able to get it for $3/L most of the time. For a higher-fat percentage yogurt, $3/L is comparable to sale prices at the grocery store (not counting the electricity costs of making it, though, which is why I’ll be looking for a Thermos).

Homemade yogurt requires more effort than milk kefir for sure, but it’s a different product altogether and definitely preferable if you like to eat yogurt for a snack or meal. Both are doable without specialty equipment, though with yogurt it might take some extra experimentation to find out what works if you aren’t using a yogurt maker or instant read thermometer. I think both are fun and rewarding, and taste a lot better than what you’ll buy from the store!

Fermenting Dairy at Home – Part 1: Milk Kefir

A couple years ago (already?!) I started hearing about kefir everywhere and decided to give it a shot myself. I had been brewing kombucha for several years, and maintaining a sourdough starter for even longer, so it seemed the next logical step in home fermentation.

Milk kefir (which is not quite the same culture as water kefir, which I also tried but wasn’t a fan of) uses a gross-looking, continually growing mass of bacteria and yeast (which are called grains, but are not actually grains – it’s sort of like a tiny scoby) to ferment dairy milk into a probiotic-rich product that tastes a lot like plain yogurt. You can also use milk kefir culture to ferment coconut milk, which is EXTREMELY DELICIOUS, but I have heard it’s not self-sustaining if you don’t do a dairy ferment every few batches to “feed” the culture with lactose.

(The "grains" - they are admittedly gross looking but like a kombucha scoby, you don't eat them)

Milk kefir is by FAR the easiest home fermentation I’ve ever done. It takes about a day and requires zero special equipment other than a jar and a strainer to catch the grains. You can use it in place of buttermilk or yogurt in recipes that call for either, which is awesome because recipes rarely call for a full litre of buttermilk. Plus – WAY cheaper. Personally I like using it in smoothies because I enjoy the tangy taste of yogurt in smoothies but as blending yogurt turns it back into liquid anyway, one might as well save money and plastic containers and use kefir instead. 

I have tried and ultimately failed to adequately thicken kefir into a more yogurt-like consistency. I’ve used gelatin and chia seeds but it always ended up creating a bunch of extra steps that I could never quite perfect (which is okay because now I know how to make yogurt at home and it’s super easy – stay tuned for Part 2!).

If you have a smoothie habit and dump a lot of yogurt directly into the blender, I would highly recommend fermenting your own kefir instead – it’ll save you a ton of money over the long term, and you will likely not notice a difference in taste or texture.

Here is how to “make” milk kefir:

• Obtain some milk kefir grains – I got mine on Kijiji
• Place the grains in a jar and pour in some milk
• Cover with a cloth or coffee filter and leave on the counter for about 12 hours. When you jiggle the jar and the milk appears to have solidified or has a layer of whey starting to separate, it’s done (it will re-liquify when you strain it). It should also smell pleasantly tangy like yogurt or buttermilk. If it smells rotten or spoiled something has gone wrong
• Strain out the grains and start over. Use the fermented kefir immediately or store in the fridge for a week or two

Note that if you use a metal strainer it may curdle the kefir slightly, which is fine if you’re going to blend it up or bake but if you are planning to drink it straight or thicken to eat like yogurt, this is not ideal, so you will probably want to use a plastic strainer.

You can also ferment milk or coconut milk without grains, if you have an active culture going – this is ideal if you don’t want to have to strain the finished product. Just add a couple spoonfuls of the finished kefir to unfermented milk or coconut milk and ferment similarly. (Don't worry - it won’t grow new grains from scratch overnight).

If you need a break from kefir, just put the grains in some milk in the fridge for a couple weeks. Eventually you need to feed them so they don’t die, but I often put mine in the fridge for a couple days a week when I’m getting too much of a backlog.

Milk kefir is fun, easy, cheap, requires almost no equipment investment, and tastes like yogurt! If you’re new to fermentation I would absolutely recommend it as a starter project.

...and eventually I had to graduate to yogurt making, which will be Part 2 of this post!

Avoiding The Stress Sandwich - or - How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Bus

In my first go-around at university, I was extremely lucky to live two blocks from campus, so I walked or biked to class every day (I also worked on campus for the summers I spent in Saskatoon – no doubt the gas money I saved in university helped keep my expenses low). However the downside of this was that unlike most University of Saskatchewan undergrads, I did not learn to use public transportation. I still had to pay for the bus pass, which I grumbled and complained about very publicly in a RedEye article that we shall not speak of ever again, and proudly never once used public transit during university.

When I went back to school about 8 years later, I applied for a parking pass, because the bus, ew. But seconds before I clicked the button to purchase the pass, I finally started thinking like the engineer my resume says I am:

• I already had to pay for a bus pass whether I used it or not
• I was about to plunk down $400 (plus future gas money) for a parking spot a 20 minute walk from the building where my classes and office were located
• The bus stop was a block from my house, and would drop me off literally across the street from my office
• A bus ride would be 30 minutes, a drive about 15-20 plus another 20 minute walk
• At the time my only guaranteed income for the coming year was $4000

Okay! I should probably learn to take the bus.

I am not exaggerating when I say that taking the bus is probably the thing that changed my life the most in the past few years. (I guess if we want to chicken/egg it, I would never have started if I hadn’t decided to go back to school...) At first I kind of hated it, especially when I had been waiting for 10 minutes on College Drive and then saw my bus go by, full to capacity and unable to stop, meaning another 20 minutes of waiting. Eventually I learned which times of day the bus had a tendency to fill and I’d go shove my way on early at the main pickup point, Place Riel (I also realized that they would usually send another empty bus 5-10 minutes later to pick the rest of us up). I didn’t know where the stops were at first, so pulled on the cord a bit early a few times. But after a while, I started to wonder why anyone would want to drive when taking the bus could be a viable alternative.

Don’t get me wrong – Saskatoon Transit is NOT perfect (though in about 5 years it should be vastly improved! I’m so excited for this!) and there are a lot of places where it makes way more sense to drive a personal vehicle. My sister lives on the opposite end of the city which I’d need a couple transfers and at least an hour to get to, and if I’m going to her house it’s usually a weekend or evening when the bus is running reduced service. Of course I will drive to her house. If a person needs to trip chain all over the place, again a vehicle usually makes sense. But if you need to go directly downtown or the university area during Monday-Friday working hours, it seems to make so much more sense to take the bus.

Of course, in a lot of cases, unless you routinely spend copious amounts of time hunting for a parking spot and/or end up parking a 15-20 minute walk from your intended destination the bus will probably add at least 10 minutes to your commute. I get that some people just can’t give up that time, but I also think it might be not be as hard as you think to add it in. The big question is - why would I encourage something that actually increases my commute time, in a world where time is so precious? In my opinion, the mental health benefits of not driving to and from work are too huge to ignore.

When a person is driving, especially in a city, their brain is in hyper-response mode. A study in Maryland concluded that the brain might be required to process over 1300 pieces of information PER MINUTE when driving 30 mph*. Besides you know, responsibly operating a deadly weapon, you are likely worried about bad drivers, the weather, icy roads, the horrible news you’re hearing on the radio, etc. This is all EXTREMELY STRESSFUL! No wonder people get to work grumpy and exhausted, and get home grumpy and exhausted. Why would you want to do something like that before and after another stressful activity like working for 8 hours?

I eventually realized that a lot of the change in my mood during grad studies was not totally due to the career change I’d made, but the fact that I wasn’t designing my day as a stress sandwich. On the bus, you can turn your brain off and let someone who is trained and paid to drive worry about all those other things. You can look out the window and see what’s going on in the city, close your eyes and listen to a podcast without having to also focus on the road, legally use your cell phone, read a book, etc. i.e., use the commute time to take a break and do something that ISN’T stressful.

Even better, at the start and end of said bus commute there’s probably at least a block or two of walking. And we should all know by now how even just a tiny bit of exercise can shift a person’s mood!

I’m not saying everyone can and should convert to bus commuting tomorrow. I know you’ve got kids to drop off at daycare! I know you have to go to Costco to get gas on the way home (do you really though?)! However, maybe on the days your car is in the shop, or you want to have a few extra after-work drinks, or it’s -40 and you dread the 20 minute walk to your parking spot – give the bus a try. Google Maps and the Transit App make it super easy to see where the bus is and can tell you exactly where and when to get on and off. And the awesome part is that the service is only going to get better over the next decade.

*Stat taken from Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us), referencing Street Graphics published by the American Society of Landscape Architects Foundation

Hooray for... cabbage!?

So this one might be weird but today I’m here to sing the praises of the bagged coleslaw mix!

I am SO OVER the mesclun mix, the “baby” spinach bag. Like, thank you for shipping me a large container all the way from California that often can't be recycled and half the leaves are slimy and wilty. It’s rare we ever use the whole bag at once, but also rare for it to last more than an extra day in the fridge once opened. Result – lots of expensive and well-traveled compost material for the green bin. This is an unsustainable model for getting your greens during Saskatchewan winters in a lot of ways, but it doesn’t have to be like this. I made the switch to cabbage a couple years ago and I’m never going back.

Cabbage holds up and lasts in the fridge for a couple weeks (even after it’s opened). It isn’t delicate and doesn’t require a large special plastic box to transport it (again, all the way from California). Cabbage is also much more nutritious and satiating than lettuce,  AND let’s not forget that a 1lb bag of coleslaw mix is usually $2-2.50 regular price, while a bag of spinach or mesclun will be at LEAST $4. This adds up if you are buying it every week! (This could be even further reduced if you buy a whole head and shred it yourself, but let's start off with baby steps.)

Cabbage is also way more versatile than what I’ll call the “fragile greens”. You can make a salad with it, or soup, or fry it up to eat as a cooked vegetable. You are not limited to mayo-based coleslaw with a coleslaw mix! I usually make a quick vinaigrette with oil, vinegar, maple syrup, salt and pepper, and toss in a few fun things like pumpkin seeds, feta, and craisins – i.e., exactly what you’d probably do with a mesclun mix, just cheaper, and you don’t have to throw it out if you don’t finish it within an hour. Cabbage slaw is especially awesome if you have to bring a salad to a potluck because you KNOW no one will actually finish the salad when there’s Swedish meatballs, perogies, and lasagna on the table, so you can take it home and eat it for lunch the next day.

(Listen, I know I am not a great food photographer, and cabbage is also not photogenic, but this is better than nothing and it was a delicious soup.)

One of the main reasons I use the internet is Smitten Kitchen (as much for the gorgeous and hilarious writing as for the delicious recipes) and I think it’s safe to say that her own love of cabbage has helped inspire mine. Two of my go-to’s she tipped me off to are her Winter Slaw with Farro, and Joshua McFadden’s cabbage soup from Six Seasons (a very good cookbook that I should probably buy). I am also 100% sold on using cabbage as the base for taco salad, don’t even talk to me about romaine. I forget how I initially stumbled upon this recipe for Fried Cabbage with Bacon and Cheddar but it’s super easy and rich and somehow you forget that you’re mainly just eating a pile of healthy cabbage for supper.

I know switching from mesclun or spinach to cabbage for winter salads seems like such a small and insignificant thing – but I swear it’s improved my life! I feel less guilty for wasting food (because there is so little waste with cabbage compared to fragile greens), my salad-based environmental footprint is smaller, I save money, and the dish itself just feels a little more substantial. Sometimes it is these seemingly tiny swaps that actually make a huge difference.

(Okay okay - what about kale? I personally am one of those weirdos who actually likes the taste and texture of kale, but I find there is a time and place for it. Cabbage is just nicer to eat raw, is far less bitter, and you can't buy a $2 bag of prewashed fork-sized kale pieces that you can quickly dump a vinaigrette on and call it a day.)

I built a new habit! (Or, Yoga January)

For 2020 I made a New Year's resolution to do a small amount of yoga every day in January. I wanted to see if it would make a noticeable difference, and also expected it to build a habit. The goal was very simple - do a (ideally different) 10-20 minute YogaDownload class every day and record/rate each class. I have found that starting small like this, and holding my "streak" accountable is a great way to build a habit.

(You might have missed my recent post about how I got into yoga and the classes I use; I forgot to link it on Twitter and the stats currently say only one person has read it - here's the link.)

I didn't quite end up doing a different class every day but I think I tried at least 25 different classes. Near the end of the month I was getting tired of holding myself to under 20 minutes and figured I should not be limiting myself to doing less exercise than I actually wanted (even if it was for science)! Several days during the month I also ended up tacking on a second class after doing my short one, but overall I found it very easy to make myself get on the mat for at least 15 or so minutes every day.

I also found it made a massive and very noticeable difference in my mobility, flexibility, energy, and mental health! Within the first 10 days or so I could do downward dog without bending my knees for the first time in my life. 2/3 through the month I could do a frog squat, again something I'd never been able to do before and just assumed I didn't have the natural flexibility for. January was an incredibly slow month work-wise - I barely cracked 20 hours of paid time in the entire month. This is something that in the past may have really discouraged me, but having some goals for what to do with my time (keeping up my Duolingo streak is another ongoing thing for 2020) made it seem like my days were not total wastes of time.

I continue to love the variety of classes on YogaDownload, and forcing myself to try at least 20 new short classes was really fun. I picked up quite a few new favourite classes and instructors. This list is mainly for myself but if anyone reading this does use YDL (or want to try out the free classes!), the following were my favourite short classes that I did in January:

Morning Quickie - Elise Fabricant (free! no subscription needed so anyone can try this class)
20-Minute Yoga Fix - Keith Allen
Anytime Sun Salutations - Jackie Casal Mahrou (my favourite teacher and one of my very favourite short classes)
Fitness 'n' Yoga: Body Awakening Flow - Ben Davis
Travel Transition Tuneup - Claire Petretti Marti (free! awesome if you've sat all day)
True North Flow - Kristin Gibowicz (Kristin has the best cues for posture and alignment)
Fuel Your Tapas Flow - Kristin Gibowicz
Quick Energy Boost - Keith Allen (this one never feels like it's only 13 minutes!)
Beat the Winter Blues Namaskar - Maria Garre
Brain Break - Ellen Kaye (free AND fully standing, no mat required)
Yoga Break for Writers' Block - Claire Petretti Marti (another free and fully standing class that you can do anywhere)
Stand Up and Stretch - Jackie Casal Mahrou (I didn't actually use this one in January, but it's 10 mins, no mat, and free so I do it lots in hotel rooms etc.)

I can't say enough about how amazed I am that such a short amount of yoga done regularly can have such powerful effects (though in hindsight, duh). My original goal was to just do this for January and see how it went, but I see zero reasons to quit. If you want to start small and try something similar, I'd recommend doing the 10-minute free Stand Up and Stretch class for a few days in a row. I think you'll notice an immediate difference, and might even be inspired to try more!

Good riddance to dry winter skin!

What Saskie among us has not dealt with the dreaded forehead oil slick over the course of a dry Saskatchewan winter? Extra chapped lips, and even cracking skin on your hands and feet – winter skin ailments range from unpleasant and unsightly to downright painful. But here is the incredible part – many of these issues can be treated easily and cheaply with one or two accessible ingredients!

I have had the not uncommon experience of working through the winter in what appeared to be the driest building on the planet. In one office I even brought in a little humidity tester and the only way we could ever get the needle to move away from 0% was to shut the door and run a humidifier all night. In the morning we’d come back in for about five blissful minutes of easy breathing until the accumulated humidity leaked out the open door. When working in this office, every hour or so I’d make a trip to the bathroom to blot the oil from my face.

While working at said office I started reading up on natural skincare. For the preceding decade I’d been using a salicylic acid based facial wash and then applying an oil-free moisturizer every morning. Because I had enough oil building up on my skin, why would I want to add any extra oil in the moisturizer? However I began to realize that this was actually counterintuitive – your skin needs oil to protect itself and makes extra if you keep washing it all off. It turns out there are a few natural oils that can “trick” your skin into thinking it’s got enough natural oil already so it won’t make more. These oils will absorb well into your skin without feeling greasy, AND prevent that hourly forehead oil slick.

Further – I realized I didn’t need to be using a cleanser to wash my face at all! A friend tipped me off that she simply rinsed her face with water and that was all that was necessary. I started doing this and then applying jojoba oil as a moisturizer, and my winter skin was TRANSFORMED. No more hourly trips to the bathroom to blot my face! A $15 bottle of jojoba oil could last a YEAR or more (you only need a couple drops at a time), and that could theoretically be my entire annual skincare budget!

(Jojoba oil is actually a plant-based liquid wax and not technically an oil, but it behaves like one.  You can likely find a bottle in any health and wellness store, and it’s also easy to find online.)

A disclaimer – I don’t regularly wear makeup, unless I’m going to some sort of event where I’m going to be photographed a lot. However even if I am wearing makeup, this system still mostly applies. Oil is an amazing makeup remover and cleanser in itself, so if I need to remove any makeup (or dirt, or sunscreen, etc.) I just apply the oil over the makeup, wash my face, and remove the remaining oil and makeup with a cloth. Then, apply another thin layer of oil to moisturize.

Because I’m the sort of person who likes to experiment, I have tried a few other oils that I also heard were good moisturizers on my face, in place of jojoba oil: macadamia, rosehip, and the all-powerful coconut. Coconut oil actually did make my skin a bit greasy, and seemed to cause breakouts; it is known to have pore-clogging properties. Rosehip oil worked fine but I didn’t like the smell, and it was more expensive than jojoba. Macadamia oil also worked great for me and is thicker than jojoba, so I find it works better than jojoba when my skin is extremely dry, and is also awesome on dry hands and feet.

If I do find I’m developing any acne or stubborn dry spots, jojoba oil has a great antibacterial sidekick that can work on these spot treatments – tea tree oil. I recommend buying the 100 ml bottle from Costco (it’s like $14 which is an insanely good price, but you can only order a pack of two online). You can mix the two every day if you are acne-prone, or just spot-apply tea tree when needed.  It also is awesome at treating dandruff – massage a generous amount into your scalp the night before you plan to wash your hair.

I am pretty committed to natural skincare these days, and make a lot of my own products like deodorant, clay-based "shampoo", and lip balm (and occasionally bar soap). None of this is particularly difficult, but takes a bit of time and collection of a few uncommon ingredients. However using skin-friendly oil in place of facial moisturizer or hand lotion is an easy and lazy step anyone can take towards natural skincare! Your dry Saskie skin will thank you all winter long.


EDIT! April 8, 2020. We went on a vacation to Mexico in early March, and when we returned our skin absolutely hated us. Probably a mix of slight sun damage and 40-50 degree temperature change, but I basically had a white beard of skin flakes for a week. The only thing that helped was PURE shea butter. It's very easy to order online and a little goes a long way. If your skin is so dry that nothing else is working, I'd definitely try shea butter!

Eat Pulses, Support Local, Save $

I have been developing a love affair with pulses over the past few years, and I hope I might convince you to get on board with me!

What’s a pulse? Essentially, dried (not fresh picked) legumes – i.e. lentils, peas, beans, and chickpeas. The majority of Canada’s (and potentially the world’s) pulses are grown right here in lil ol Saskatchewan. Despite the fact that we are a Pulse Powerhouse, these are food items you may have considered all your life to be very boring, tasteless, and hard to cook (if you are a lifelong Saskie of mainly Eastern European descent; if not, please commence eyerolling). Here’s the thing though – they are not hard to cook, easy to learn how to season so they actually taste good, and extremely nutritious and CHEAP AF.

Ever since I was a kid I have been a frugal person. I don’t know where this trait came from, but I was one of those weird children who rarely spent their birthday money, opting instead to sock it away in a Cheez Whiz jar(!!) until I finally got a bank account at the age of 18(!!). This has more or less carried into adulthood; though my money goes directly into a zero-fee bank account now instead of a Cheez Whiz jar I still seem to be forever in a contest with myself to be as frugal as possible. I find that if I can make a dish where pulses are the main protein, I can often keep the entire meal (3-6 adult-sized servings) under $5.

Pulses are a great way to eat frugally and nutritiously; honestly it almost feels like I’m cheating somehow. A couple Christmases ago we were gifted an Instant Pot* which transformed our ability to use pulses, as it no longer took an hour to cook the beans BEFORE adding them to the chili, or confined us to volume measures of “one can”.  

(Most of my pulse and whole grain collection)

So listen – I know that for most Saskies of Eastern European farmer descent, experiences with pulses have probably been mainly the following:

• A lentil side dish someone tried to make because they heard they were a “superfood” that consisted of al dente green lentils boiled in chicken broth
• An otherwise JUST FINE salad that someone ruined by throwing in a can of soggy chickpeas "to be healthy"
• Undersalted split pea soup
• Chili

This is not a particularly encouraging list of ways to enjoy pulses (other than the chili). In fact, 3/4 to me sound downright disgusting and I would not recommend them. This is generally what happens if you try to cook pulses as if they are boiled potatoes (FOR THE RECORD as the granddaughter of a Slovakian farmer I personally have nothing against boiled potatoes). To really transform pulses it is best to look to the wisdom of the rest of the world, and perhaps adopt some not-so-Ukrainian flavours into one’s cooking.

Here are some of the preparations that have helped me get Hooked on Pulses:

• Homemade falafel – this is scarcely harder than making burgers, other than the mental prep of remembering to soak the chickpeas overnight. DO NOT use canned chickpeas for this. I don’t care what the food blogger tells you in their post sponsored by Eden Brand Chickpeas, canned chickpea falafel is terrible. I love Ottolenghi's recipe and unlike this blogger, have no trouble pan-frying them (perhaps my cast-iron skillet is the secret)
• Adding red lentils to pureed vegetable soups to add bulk/protein! This is a great trick that I invented and even generally acceptable to sensitive-palated Mennonites and/or children
• If you are going to use canned chickpeas, there are exactly two acceptable preparations – pureeing them into hummus, or crisping them like this
• Soup, soup, and more soup – there are so many great pulse-focused soup recipes out there! This Italian bean soup has become my go-to over the past few years, I also love this Quebec-style split pea soup recipe, and the Whitewater Cooks lemony lentil soup recipe is so flavourful
• Black bean Tex Mex taco filling – either add black beans to taco meat to stretch the amount, or just season black beans like you would taco meat. I don’t make Tex Mex style tacos anymore at all, instead opt for a shredded cabbage base and pile on the fillings (cheese, beans, sour cream, salsa) to make a very filling salad
• DAL – okay, I realize using the term “dal” to mean Indian-style preparations of pulses is not linguistically correct (as I understand, dal just means pulses) but this is how I’ll refer to it. I am obsessed with the cookbook The New Indian Slow Cooker by Neela Paniz. I’ve never had a cookbook I’ve used even half as much, and all the dal recipes have been life-changing. I would buy this book for the green mung bean recipe alone.  It is sort of astonishing how just adding like four extra spices or aromatics to some mung beans or lentils completely transform them (the non Ukrainians are like, DUH). If you aren’t convinced, next time you eat at an Indian restaurant trade the butter chicken for something off the dal section of the menu and see what I mean.

I think that’s enough for now. The summary, the TL;DR: pulses need not be inherently flavourless, or difficult to incorporate into your meal rotation. They can help you save money and eat healthier, all while supporting Saskatchewan farmers. Eating more of them is win-win all around!

*While you don’t NEED a pressure cooker to enjoy pulses regularly, for the way I cook it’s a pretty essential appliance. It is cheaper and more conducive to versatility to buy dried pulses rather than canned.

I *Heart* Yoga (Blogger won't let me make a heart emoticon because it breaks the HTML)

I mentioned in one of my very first posts that one of the keys to getting more exercise was finding some fitness activities that I actually enjoyed, and yoga is one of them.

As an athletically-uninclined child, my parents still put me in a variety of lessons to make sure I got regular exercise and became a “well rounded person” (their words). The activity I was most terrible at, and somehow got worse at as I got older, was modern dance. Jazz, tap, ballet, I was just not good. I could never straighten my arms just so, I didn’t have the natural flexibility for high kicks, and I couldn’t remember to keep smiling while concentrating on putting my body into what felt like unnatural motions. When I was 13, my teacher made it clear to my parents that I was not cut out for the competitive classes and should enroll in “recreational jazz.” At the recital that year, my parents finally agreed I could quit dance lessons. No doubt the sheer amount of non-talent on display in the rec jazz performance finally convinced them that dance was not my calling.

(Screenshot from a video of my first tap recital)

All this to say – everything that my parents wanted me to get out of dance lessons and I never did, I get out of yoga.

I was pretty late to the yoga game, but signed up for a beginner class through the community association a couple years ago. I really enjoyed it, and as I was still a grad student I also started taking advantage of the classes available to USask students and staff at the PAC. These were large, fitness-focussed classes though, and a couple times while following along I put my body in a position that I shouldn’t have.

The thing that really changed my yoga life was discovering the website YogaDownload.com. I much prefer being able to pick a class based on the needs of my body on a particular day, and the instructors are absolutely stellar. Because they aren’t live classes, the instructions and cues need to be very clear, and there is always an emphasis on safety. For access to hundreds of classes, you can get a Groupon that works out to about $40 CAD/year, and the classes can be fully downloaded to keep forever.

As a kid in the 90’s, yoga hadn’t really caught on yet in my town, so there wasn't an option for me to try it instead of dance lessons. It's also not really something one thinks of as being a "kid-friendly" activity. But I often compare the two in my mind. The philosophy behind yoga would have worked so much better for me. Instead of getting yelled at for not having straight arms, I would have received better cues as to how to activate certain muscles in order to get them straighter. Instead of failing a dance exam for not being flexible, I would have been encouraged to do my best, and recognize that even a small bit of improvement was great progress. And as for the smiling – I love that yoga is just for me, not an audience!

Saskatoon has a ton of options for yoga classes (there’s probably one available through your community association), but because I use yoga partly for stress relief, I have no desire to do something that stresses me out (driving) in order to get to it. This is mainly why my preference is the online classes. I may revisit the community centre class again sometime because I can walk there, but I’m perfectly happy using YogaDownload as I get more familiar with the practice and improve my skill level.

(PS this is NOT a sponsored post, I am but a simple blogger with like 8 regular readers)

Espresso Con Panna with Sunnyside Cream

If you follow Saskatoon and area food news, you probably are somewhat familiar with Sunnyside Creamery. It is a small dairy out by Martensville where one can buy fresh unhomogenized (still pasteurized) milk and other dairy products (as well as meat and other farm products). I had been wanting to try it since it opened but couldn't justify a trip to Martensville just for milk.

I'm disappointed about the Saskatoon Farmers' Market's recent move to Koyl Avenue near the airport, but excited that a couple of the vendors decided to start a new online market where I can still buy from some of my favourites without having to travel to the bowels of North Industrial. Not only does The Little Market Box currently carry products from most of my favourite vendors (and still adding more), they also carry a variety of Sunnyside Creamery products.

I was so excited when I discovered this, and made an order for the soft opening to try the whole milk, heavy cream, and cheese curds. I liked the milk a lot (it foamed really gorgeously for cappuccinos), the curds were very good (excited to make a legit squeaky homemade poutine at some point), but the cream? The cream CHANGED MY LIFE. It is thick AF and extremely sweet and rich, and makes whipped cream that is out of this world.

This summer I attended the last academic conference of my Master's career in Bologna, Italy. My mom and I went on a food tour on our first day in the city, and our first tasting honestly was my most memorable culinary experience of the entire trip: espresso con panna.

Espresso con panna is simply a shot of espresso with whipped cream, but this cream was magical. Our guide called it "French whipped cream" and said it was made with 38% cream instead of the usual 33-35% which is what one usually buys as whipping cream in the grocery store. It had a texture nearly like meringue - it was so heavy that it didn't really melt into the espresso so we had to eat it with a spoon. It was divine.

When I came home I wanted to recreate it, and purchased the 36% "old fashioned" whipping cream at the grocery store. It still wasn't heavy enough.

I don't know what the percentage is in Sunnyside's heavy cream, but it's PERFECT for the espresso con panna of my dreams. This is a very simple yet sophisticated evening dessert or lazy weekend morning treat. I am obsessed with it.

Extremely Decadent Espresso Con Panna 

To serve one:

Whip about 2 tbsp of Sunnyside heavy cream with a pinch of sugar and dash of vanilla until you have stiff peaks. Use a spatula to scrape it into an espresso mug or small ramekin.

Brew a shot of espresso (if you don't have an espresso machine, you could either use some extra strong coffee, or grab an espresso shot to go from McDonald's). If you can though, brew it directly over the cream.

Enjoy slowly with a spoon!

Making Soup

When people die, I need to make soup.

I don’t know why I’m drawn to making soup when I’m emotionally exhausted, but it seems to calm me. I’ve been making soup from total scratch for enough years now that it’s mostly second nature, and I think when one is dealing with loss, they crave a bit of familiarity. I know that when my dad died I couldn’t read any new books or watch any new TV shows for quite a while. I craved familiar stories, and I felt like I needed to make a lot of soup and bread.

An elderly great uncle of mine who was in a nursing home for the past few years passed away on December 31. We hadn’t been close for most of my life, but when he fell ill and was being treated at Royal University Hospital at the same time I was working on my master’s degree, I started going over every day to visit him. When he moved into Sherbrooke Community Centre, I maintained at least weekly visits.

He had been steadily declining in recent months, and his death was fairly expected and welcome, unlike that of my dad. However, death still carries the same finality, no matter who it is, or at what stage of their life or sickness they are at. It is a lot to process, logistically and emotionally.

My brain and body felt nearly void of energy after a very busy Christmas break drew to a close, and end of life logistics began. I finally dragged myself off the couch mid-afternoon on January 1, threw the Christmas ham bone and a few aromatics in my Instant Pot, and forced myself to walk to the grocery store.

At 7:30pm, about two hours later than usual, we had a scratch split pea soup on the table. I did not take a picture of it. Here instead is a picture of chicken noodle soup that I made a while ago.

This is how to make very flavourful stock from any animal bones you choose, plus aromatics. Homemade stock makes homemade soup a million times better. I prefer to use an Instant Pot, but you can also do it on the stove or even the slow cooker.

• Equivalent of at least one chicken carcass of bones (e.g. a pile of wing bones, pork rib bones, beef soup bones, a ham bone, etc. If it’s got some browning, even better. Meat and skin scraps are gold in here too)
• Half an onion                                                                             
• 2 cloves of garlic
• A leek top (optional but essential in my opinion)
• A few thyme sprigs (optional)
• 1 carrot
• 1 celery stalk
• About 10 peppercorns
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp acidic substance, or a tomato (e.g. tomato paste, vinegar, lemon juice, apparently this helps to pull collagen out of the bones)

Toss everything in the Instant Pot, fill to max, and pressure cook for two hours. Allow to naturally release (will take up to two more hours, but I do not recommend quick release for this).

My favourite way to strain is to line a large metal sieve with cheesecloth, put it over a big bowl with pouring lips, and ladle stock and solids into the sieve. As the bowl fills, pour the strained stock into your containers of choice. I find that large yogurt containers and their equivalent are the perfect amount for creating a base for a soup for 2-3 people. I usually get 4 of these out of my 6 quart Instant Pot. After all the soup is strained you can just lift the cheesecloth and solids out of the sieve and discard for easy cleanup.

When I make beef stock, I put it in the fridge and let the fat solidify to discard it or save for later use. This is a personal preference because I find tallow has a very strong flavour that I don’t love. Pork and chicken fat melts better into the soup and is not noticeable, just delicious.

Best Books I Read in 2019

I have mentioned before how great the Saskatoon Public Library is for facilitating “excessive” reading – on December 31 I crossed the $3000 mark in borrowing for 2019! There is no way I’d spend three grand on books if I wasn’t using a library, which means I just wouldn’t read as much without it. So thank you again to the SPL!

I really like reading other people’s book recommendation posts, so in celebration of basically paying for my 2019 property taxes in borrowing, I want to do a post about my favourite books that I read this year. I’ll keep it to the six best fiction and non-fiction/memoir/etc. This is hard to narrow down because I finished 87 books in 2019, but these are my top recommendations. (Links to my Goodreads reviews – note that I didn’t give these all 5 stars, but they’ve stuck with me enough that I am considering them higher than some of the five star books I read).

Fiction

The Book Thief – This is probably the best book I’ve read in years. I’ve never been moved by a book so much – I was actually sobbing at the end (that’s not a spoiler). The story was so lovely and heart warming and sad. The writing is a little “experimental” but didn’t take too long to get used to. I absolutely loved it and couldn’t stop talking to people about it.

Truly Madly Guilty – Something about this book, one of Liane Moriarty (of Big Little Lies fame)’s lower rated by the masses, really spoke to me. The characters got in my head and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks. It is a very well done character study on guilt, and I just found it so interesting and relatable. I am such a fan of Liane Moriarty’s books but I keep putting off reading another one because I don’t want to finish them all too fast.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing – This book is legit art. It is not an easy breezy read, but it’s definitely rewarding if you commit. I actually didn’t have trouble getting into the story like many other readers have stated, but it did take me about two weeks to get through. I’m a bit embarrassed to say (or should I be? Society failed me) that I really didn’t know anything about the Chinese Cultural Revolution until I read this book. It shocked me. I felt so ignorant. I cried on the bus during a very sad scene. This is truly a book for people who love to read.

The Traveling Cat Chronicles – Three of my top fiction reads from the year made me cry, and this is the third. It is a Japanese translation, a short novel from the perspective of a cat who goes traveling with its owner who is trying to find it a new home. Eventually you find out why, and it breaks you and you cry and then the cat makes you feel better, as they do. So lovely.

The Saturday Night Ghost Club – What a treat to discover Craig Davidson this year! What a disappointment to find out most of his books are terrifying horror novels that I am too scared to read.
This one was really wonderful, a tad spooky but mostly just a great coming of age story set in Niagara Falls in the 80’s. It’s really short too, so if you don’t have a lot of time for reading but want to at least plug through one book on vacation or something, this is a good one for that.

East of Eden – John Steinbeck’s magnum opus, I maybe broke my book club by picking this one as we had to hold over a whole month because it took so long to read, and one person quit (hopefully not over this book though). A reading experience that is definitely about the journey, not the destination. Everyone should probably read this at some point in their life.

Non Fiction

The Invention of Nature – I knew of Alexander von Humboldt's existence, because I grew up in a town named after him, but not much else. He immediately became one of my favourite historical figures. He is possibly the historical figure who has influenced your life the most who you don’t know anything about. Read this book! AVH is amazing.

Walkable City – I’m very into learning about urban planning and active transportation. I read quite a few books on the subject this year, but this is the one that kicked it off and led me down all sorts of other rabbit holes. The author also published sort of a condensed, pictorial sequel this year called Walkable City Rules which is a bit more of an accessible coffee table version.

Invisible Women – If you are involved in any kind of decision making that affects humans, this is a pretty important book. Tons and tons of examples of how gender-based unconscious bias (i.e. just assuming women can be approximated as shorter men with no penises, or ignored completely because hormones make the science too hard to control) has and is unintentionally harming and killing women. This book got brought up a couple times at various occupational health conferences I was at this year.

Where Am I Now – My second reading of Mara Wilson’s WONDERFUL memoir. Can she please write another one? I just adore this book. So many celebrity memoirs are full of boring fluff but this one holds up.

Save Me The Plums – Another very lovely and fun memoir! I loved getting to read about what it’s like to run a high-end food magazine in New York City, and I think anyone who enjoys food writing will be charmed by this book.

Good Morning, Monster – One of the last books I finished this year, and it blew my mind. It might be the most disturbing book I’ve ever read, but also very inspiring. I can’t stop thinking about it, and how lucky I was to have an abuse-free childhood. This one will shake you to your core but I highly recommend it.

Finally - a bonus shoutout to two very prolific authors who I read for the first time this year, Stephen King and Agatha Christie! While their books are not on this list, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know their writing this year and there’s clearly no shortage of books by either to check out.

I've set my reading goal at 85 books in 2020! A busy Christmas "break" has me off to a bad start, but I'm glad I spent some time drafting this post before the craziness hit. If you read any of these on my recommendation please get in touch and let me know what you thought!

We chopped down a tree in the forest!

Part 2! We had such a perfect Prince Albert National Park trip this year that I wanted to write about it. There’s still one more week to go get your tree!

As I mentioned in my last post, we stayed in a cabin at Elk Ridge Resort this year. However on the way in, we decided to overshoot the Elk Ridge turnoff, head into the park, and do the Boundary Bog hiking trail before it got dark. This is always a nice quick trail to do either on your way in or out of the park, and was a great way to stretch our legs after a few hours of driving. I love this trail in the winter, with the dormant tamaracks and snow-covered boardwalk.

After Boundary Bog we went to check in at Elk Ridge, unpacked, read books for a while, and then went for supper at the Fireside restaurant. We had a delicious meal, both ordering the available fish dishes, which proved not so heavy that we had room for sticky date pudding for dessert.

On Saturday morning we made breakfast and coffee in the cabin and set our game plan for the day. We had originally hoped to do some cross country skiing on this trip, but the trails at Elk Ridge and in PANP were not quite ready yet, so we recalibrated and decided to try the Mud Creek hiking trail at South Bay. I have been to PANP nearly every year of my life, but never on this trail, and I feel ripped off! It was such an amazingly beautiful trail, with water views almost the whole way around the loop. The highlight though was seeing two otters tumbling around, playing, and sliding on the ice on their bellies – neither of us had ever seen this outside of a zoo!

(The sun was so bright, I had no idea if I was in focus or not, so these are not particularly good photos.)

After Mud Creek, we drove over to the Height of Land Tower, which is another park institution that I only recently discovered for myself and feel ripped off about. The road was blocked so we parked at the barrier and did the 5 minute walk to the tower. This is a park highlight, winter or summer – such an amazing view.

We then stopped at the park office to get our tree permit and couldn’t resist the 25% off on park merch. We restrained ourselves to a couple of mugs, however, and then set off for one last trail – Waskesiu River. Usually we see some wildlife on this one in the winter but it was silent except for some invisible chattering squirrels. Our winter visits often coincide with cloudy weather – the sunny day made for a new experience on this trail!

The weather overall was pretty perfect for winter hiking – about -20 with almost no wind, which was not too cold but not so warm that we overheated while in full winter walking gear.

Our second supper at Fireside was not quite as memorable as the first, but still good. We both ordered dishes featuring elk (when in Rome), but this time were too full for dessert.

We made a pretty quick exit on our final day – breakfast in the cabin, pack up and check out, and a stopoff to choose a tree. In other years it’s taken quite a while to find a good tree, but this time we spotted a nicely shaped, full tree right off the road. It just barely fit into the vehicle – definitely the fanciest tree we’ve brought home from the park!

On the way home we decided to stop in Hague and try Jake’s Burger, which was featured a couple years ago on a “top burgers in Saskatchewan” list. We’ve of course driven past Hague dozens of times, but never stopped to eat. Chalk it up to yet another thing we’ve cheated ourselves out of all these years – I will never be stopping for lunch at Prince Albert McDonald’s again! The burgers were so fresh and juicy and the options for free toppings unbeatable. We opted out of fries (they did look amazing though) so we could get a saskatoon tart with ice cream (in reality, ice cream with a bit of tart on the side) from Home Baked Goodness in the same little food court building. I think most south-central SK road trippers know about the legendary Wakaw rest stop, but this place is giving it a run for its money!

Overall, we had a wonderful weekend keeping some traditions alive and adding in new ones. While we splurged a bit, this is a trip that needn’t be terribly expensive if you plan your accommodations and meals right either. Visiting PANP is a perfect way to make the most of winter in SK!

We're going to chop down a tree in the forest!

For the past few years, Prince Albert National Park has had a “cut your own tree” program where you can go to the park, get a permit, and cut down a blue spruce from the Waskesiu town site fire break. We have been doing this every year since it started, and it is an extremely fun winter activity.

Going up to PANP in the winter is wonderful in itself and we’d still go even without the promise of a free Charlie Brown tree (let’s be real, these trees are not cultivated to be decorative and a bit on the scraggly side). The park is so quiet and empty, but they still keep most of the hiking trails groomed and it’s an awesome time of year for wildlife viewing because there just aren’t that many people around.

(Last year we definitely found the king of the forest while hunting for our tree!)

There is not a ton of choice for accommodations in or around the park, but there is enough to accommodate most price points. If you want to stay in the park, you can get a room or suite at either Waskesiu Lake Lodge (warning – autoplay video with sound) or The Hawood Inn for as little as $80/night, or get a cabin at Lost Creek Resort (again, autoplay warning). Lost Creek is the fanciest and newest of the three options, but is off the main road without a lake view. The Hawood has the only in-park dining in the offseason. We have stayed at both The Hawood and Lost Creek which have both been good – though I would avoid the Hanging Heart Condo at The Hawood in winter because it is far too big to keep warm with the existing heating infrastructure.

(Waskesiu River boardwalk trail)

Another place to stay just outside the park is Elk RidgeResort, which has everything from hotel rooms to large cottages or townhouses. This year we’re staying in a cabin for our second time at Elk Ridge. The pricing is similar to Lost Creek. We prefer cabins to hotel rooms because we can cook a lot of our own meals, and the guaranteed quiet. The restaurant at Elk Ridge is very good (we’ve eaten at least one meal every year there for the last few, and between the two of us only one meal has ever been bad).

(Boundary Bog trail)

Back to chopping down your own tree – I come from a “real Christmas tree” family, where we always had a real tree growing up, but we never went to a tree farm to choose one. We lived close to a mall which either had a tree seller set up in the parking lot, or a cage of trees at the Extra Foods, so we’d walk down to the mall with the toboggan and pull the tree home on the sled. Brahm and I would always get real trees from a greenhouse or tree lot for Christmas for the first few years we were married, but the first time we cut one down in the fire break was kind of magical. It is so much fun to hunt around for the “perfect” tree. In nature, most trees are not nicely symmetrical so it takes a while to find a good one, and then your car will smell amazing all the way home.

I highly recommend this Saskatchewan winter escape! It’s just under a 3 hour drive from Saskatoon, but the northern boreal forest is a completely different landscape, and especially beautiful and rejuvenating in the winter.

(Last year's tree in all its Charlie Brown glory)