The Hot Hazy Days of Summer are here and it is time to relax – summer can’t possibly be anything other than time to relax, can it…? Trips to the cottage; excursions to the beach; early morning walks before it gets too warm out; late evening dining in the park…all of these amount to some seriously simple meals and even simpler desserts.

I remember my mom cooking during the long days of summer when we were kids, but it wasn’t nearly the undertaking it could be when it was cooler out and we were out of her hair and in school all day. She subscribed to the theory that ease of preparation was a necessity during the summer months. With no air conditioning, four kids under the age of 12, a relatively small kitchen that was often in some stage of renovation (with my father everything is always in some stage of renovation), sometimes without running water, other times with no electricity and even times with no fridge (all due to various stages of renovations), she had to make do with what she could, and feed her very active, obviously starving children to the best of her ability.

Thankfully, my mother managed to pass these gems of wisdom down to me over the years. I too believe that during the summer, food doesn’t always have to be fancy or upscale, but it can still be delicious and satisfying. Barbequed steak or chicken, some fresh vegetables done simply, bread from the market and desserts that center around pre-prepared ingredients and simple accoutrements.

Recently Leith and I spent a lovely relaxing weekend and ate like kings, with very little effort. This gorgeous dessert is a perfect example of wonderful stress-free summer fare. Burstingly fresh berries bought at the street market, a bit of sugar and a gorgeous buttery pound cake from a small local bakery (that we grilled lightly before serving). Add these things together and you spell (and taste!) pure summer perfection.

As the moderately busy mom of a kindergartner, I tend to have a difficult time getting dinner put together most nights without someone throwing a temper tantrum (and by “someone” I mean either of us). Between work, school and social commitments, often the only time I am able to share quality time with Leith is during dinner.

Anyone who has a preschooler or kinder at home will understand when I say that dinner is hardly our finest hour. Leith is acting persnickety, I am flustered and tired from a long day at work and time is short. Lately, it has been more than tempting to simply throw the meal on the table and allow him to just zone out in front of the television. I hate to admit it, but I actually did that once recently. I am aware that this doesn’t qualify as quality time spent with my kid, and recently have been trying to think of new ways to optimize our “witching hour” to get us to sit down and eat, and talk — on (somewhat!) gracious terms.

When it comes time to prepare dinner, Leith is always buzzing around the kitchen looking for something to play with or snack on. I involve him in the cooking process – either by helping out in the kitchen or just simply allowing him to pretend cook on the kitchen floor. He loves to get ingredients out of the fridge and can be trusted to cart items to the counter and back (he’s even managed to lug eggs from the fridge to the counter without dropping them!) while I am cooking. He has also recently graduated to tasks such as cracking an egg, mixing ingredients by hand, adding various ingredients to the mixer, separating onion slices and piling on pizza toppings. There is nothing wrong with a boy who likes to cook.

Depending on how busy a given week is, I do still see the importance of organizing at least one night when we can enjoy each other’s company for more than a few fleeting moments. The two of us sit at the table, with the television off and talk school, or our plans for the upcoming weekend. Sometimes I even try to have some fun with this “special” night by having a themed dinner like homemade pizza night or cooking Leith’s favorite breakfast food (“Bacon and eggs! Bacon and eggs!” he chants) for dinner. This is a great way to bond and cook up a creative and tasty dish that both of us enjoy. Family time shouldn’t be limited to eating whatever happens to be on the table – it should also include the fun and creativity put into the meal so that everyone feels included and excited for the delicious dishes ahead.

I have a few stand-by recipes that are good for these sorts of evenings – I hope you will try them with your family and let me know what secrets you have come up with for dealing with the dinner-time disaster hour.

Sometimes the best recipes are those that don’t come from beautiful, well-photographed, graphically gorgeous, famous-chef endorsed cookbooks. Sometimes the best recipes aren’t those that you’ve seen used in ritzy restaurants, culinary cafes or gourmet gustatory shops. Usually — and correct me if I’m wrong here — the best recipes you will ever try are those that have been given to you by someone.I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few months going through my mother’s cookbooks — stolen quite a few of them as well and trekked them back to our small apartment, so that if I want to use them they’re at my disposal…much to her chagrin. I’ve also been perusing her binders and folders and envelopes of recipes; from magazines, the internet (my mom recently has discovered how great the internet is…) and some written on napkins, among fragile-looking pages with her beautifully cursive handwriting that she has kept for probably forty years, and even a cake box top or two as well as the package for chocolate chips…her favourite chocolate-chip cookie recipe.

Yesterday I conquered the unicorn, I believe, of her collection. A smallish green fabric-covered three-ring binder with the words “MY RECIPES” embossed on the fabric. Flipping through the pages I found some tried-and-true recipes that I recall from my childhood: her famous warm potato salad, McCall’s Cherry Cheesecake, Beef Stroganoff, Salmon Loaf (a recipe I have tried numerous times to duplicate without success…now I know the secret!) and the piece-de-resistance (for me anyway), a recipe for which I have been searching for some time, the elusive Empire Cookie (which I am making next weekend for sure).

In and among these treasures were other ones, perhaps less related to cooking than to history. A list my mom wrote, probably in 1971, of things that needed to be done to the house (the house they still live in today) – some of which haven’t yet been done!. A small note in the corner of one page, written in her hand, quietly declaring her love for my father. A short list of kitchen supplies she wanted (oven-proof 9″ skillet, electric deep frying pan, casserole pots, dutch oven, sundae dishes). A typed letter from her mother (because she had arthritis in her hands at quite a young age), written when my older brother was still young enough to have been playing with something in the back seat of her car (probably around 1974). Pages she tore out of the Buffalo yellow pages with telephone numbers for hotels (she loves to shop in Buffalo), and of course, a few “I love you ” notes from myself, written, judging from the handwriting at around age 6 or 7 — 1978 – 1979.

These sorts of things grab you — they show a passage of time that at one second is standing absolutely still and at the next moment is speeding along like a racecar. That is one of the reasons I started writing about how my family and food intersect for me – in order to be able to show my child what life was like when cooking was something we all loved…and I still had the time to record recipes, lists and notes just like my mother did at my age.

“Life is pain, princess…anyone who tells you differently is selling something…”

I think someone pulled my plug. I feel drained. Used up. Ka-put. As though someone has sucked the life from me like Prince Humperdink did to Wesley in “The Princess Bride”…

I don’t want to feel this way; I hate feeling down. But I’m at the point of wallowing now and that is pathetic. I’m finding it hard to concentrate on one thing for any length of time and even finding it difficult to smile. It’s like it takes too much energy to do these things and it is energy that I cannot spare. I’m walking around in a sort of blue funk without really paying any attention to what is going on around me; and have been like this since last week sometime…maybe the weekend, but somehow I remember being happy on Sunday; or parts of Sunday at any rate. I don’t get like this often anymore; I used to go through this everyday. Every single day then was an effort at not crying or not just staying in bed and feeling rotten. Now it comes on, unexpectedly, rather forcefully and lasts a few days each time. It’s depression and it’s scary.

I lay in bed late last night or early this morning, pondering the reasons for it’s arrival this time. I couldn’t come up with one solid, worthwhile reason why I could be feeling this way. I’m healthier than I’ve been in a long time, I have good friends whom I care for and care for me, I’m enjoying spending time with Leith, and I certainly don’t have excessive amounts of stress in my life right now. I do have a few major deadlines at work in the next month to deal with and April is quickly approaching and with it comes my birthday (I never thought I would ever be this old). These things are not worth feeling this badly about, they have always been there, and always will be; they’re not factors in my funk.

I’ve been here before; it all feels very familiar to me right now. Last year I recall going through the exact same thing in February and March. I was thinking about that this morning and wondering how this is similar — was there something going on then that is going on now? I can’t put my finger on it, but it does seem as though it is the same thing now as it was then. Just need to narrow down the factors and stop doing or being exposed to whatever it is that is causing this, like avoiding stuff that I’m allergic to.

So what is it? I’m thinking that I need some time to myself. I am beginning to feel as though this funk has become the focus of my life; it is defining me and that’s not a good thing. Perhaps I have given it more attention and more dedication than it deserves; more than I should have. Maybe I just need a good batch of coffee and chocolate scented cookies to indulge in with a great big cup of coffee to take the edge off.

How do you deal with the early Spring blahs?

In my life I have been extremely fortunate to have had some truly incredible friends. I can list them all by name and tell you in minute detail why they were so incredible if you want me to, but I don’t think you need me to do that. These amazing people have touched my life and my heart in ways I will undoubtedly never be capable of repaying.

Friendships, to me, are not fly-by-night episodes, fraught with emotional upheaval, nor are they long, drawn-out, to-be-continued soap operas wherein you never completely understand anyone’s motives or why so-and-so married her brother. The few really truly amazing friendships I have had in my life were calm and interesting; they were filled with laughter and pain and then laughter again. We both did something for the other person that they couldn’t get elsewhere. The friendships were important and strong and of course, each person tucked themselves inside the heart of the other quite comfortably.

So many people liken friendship or relationships to an onion. I’ve never quite identified with or stood behind this analogy. An onion, while it can be tasty when cooked and can lend distinct flavour to almost any savoury dish, it just isn’t as airy, or as palatable as most friendships (good friendships) are. While a friendship or relationship might peel away in a million layers (“mille-feuilles”), the layers of an onion are not fragile, delightful, and sweet like these puff pastry beauties.

These chocolate turnovers are as delicious as they are flaky — one bite will remind you of the sweetness of the perfect friendship. The chocolate is the love and the pastry is the flaky, difficult to manage crust that encases it.

Recipe: Chocolate Turnovers

Sugar is a weakness of mine. While to you that might be a rather obvious statement, what with me being the creator of Sugar High Fridays, I don’t think I fully realized the whole truth until recently. You see, it was a closeted fetish all these years. One I harbored yet denied frequently, guiltily, shamefacedly…but vehemently.

I remember in university I practically lived off sugar. Sure I could cook and was actually working my way through a book of soups and soup stocks while I was in school, but sugary snacks were my vice. I guess that might explain the unending amounts of energy I had then…that and being nineteen years old, I suppose. I recall one afternoon while memorizing a script for a show I somehow managed to eat my way through an entire box of store-bought strawberry flaky pastries. I also recall having a bad head cold one day and eating three chocolate bars in place of three healthy meals — which somehow cured me. I remember baking an ooey-gooey chocolate pudding cake for a friend’s birthday party and wanting desperately to just stay home with said cake and keep it all to myself. It was a sickness, really.

Lately I’ve been much better. I eat fairly well on a day-to-day basis and I no longer self-medicate with chocolate or ice cream, at least not regularly. But the attachment is still there. I figured this out after I’d eaten half a batch of homemade fudge while I watched a movie about a week ago. I could feel my heart palpitating as I sat there after wards, glowing in the after-effects of entirely too much sugar.

While I haven’t touched a piece of this fudge since that fateful day last week it does call to me from the cupboard in the kitchen. I can smell it as I sit on the sofa; it’s sweet, buttery, sugary scent wafting its way towards me. I think I might just have to have one more piece. Just a very small one this time.

Well…maybe two…*sigh*.

Everyone keeps their own guilty pleasure comfort food in their kitchen for times of need. My mom keeps hoards of chocolate and red licorice, just in reach, just in case. One friend of mine never leaves the grocery store without restocking her supply of salted, roasted nuts – she can’t live without them in the house. Another always has at least five different kinds of cookies in her cupboard for emergency situations that require sustenance. A guy I knew in University had at least two full packages of processed cheese in the fridge and white bread in the cupboard for grilled cheese, day or night. Everyone has their needs.

My guilty pleasures range far and wide from gumdrops and Swedish berries to, fresh rye bread with salty peanut butter on top. I love good chocolates and warm-from-the-oven brownies, but don’t eat them often (probably a good thing); they’re reserved for extreme turmoil only, a few times a year.

The biggest guilty pleasure I have however is something many people turn their noses up at when I mention it. Even Leith hasn’t learned to like it and can’t quite comprehend why I would eat such I thing – surreptitiously or not.

Canned Creamed Corn.

Yes, you read correctly – I am a creamed corn addict. My name is Jennifer and it’s been probably about 30 years now that I have loved the sweet, golden, glutinous mess that comes out of a can with a tall, handsome, green man on the front. I only eat it maybe twice a year and it has to be when no one is home. I open the can, smelling the sweet corn scent waft up. Plop it into a small pan on the stove, heat it through and slop it into a bowl for one, adding some chopped chives and freshly ground pepper – maybe a splash of hot sauce. It’s usually on a night when all I want to do is prop my feet up on the ottoman and watch some crappy television, drowning my sorrows in creamed corn.

Finally the other day I thought of a way to use my guilty pleasure as an ingredient rather than the main dish. Folding a can of it into some really delicious vegetarian chili made me feel much less guilty about eating it. It lent a slightly sweet, delicate flavour that went really well with the chunks of sweet potato and sweet red pepper. It was a different tasting chili but one I would definitely make again, it was delicious, and warmed me all the way down to my toes.

Once upon a time, seemingly in a completely different life, I was an early riser. I was one of those much dreaded “morning people” actually. I would be up before the alarm had a chance to wake me, out of the house at some strange, ungodly hour and rather enjoyed being the first to arrive at work. Weekend mornings I never slept in or (God forbid!) took naps in the afternoon. I can remember myself on Sunday mornings long-ago, up drinking coffee at around 6am, planning the comings and goings of the day that lay ahead.

These days I rarely get out of the house and to work early, and my weekends are smothered by naps and fatigue. I’m always in a hurry to catch a streetcar or subway or running, running, running, in order to get somewhere on time. Breakfast has become a sad misplaced empty desire and is usually a few crackers from my drawer at work washed down with a very, very large cup of strong coffee. Really, it’s no wonder I’ve been feeling run down with not eating much before lunch (which I usually tend get to around 2pm) and running around like a crazy person trying to get places on time.

I’m always coming up with new and improved versions of muffins for myself and this weekend was no different. In between catnaps and coffees I managed to concoct some delicious blueberry apricot muffins that, while not exactly healthy per se, they are quite delicious, and filled to the brim with anti-oxidants from the fruit. I eat them with some sliced apples and a handful of fresh blackberries. If you added a dollop of low-fat yogurt you’d probably be able to run a veritable office triathlon like I tend to do every morning (editing grant applications, tracking finances and dodging the bosses; world-class events all).

Don’t forget to check out my recipes on YummyMummy.ca — I’m their new “Mummy Eats” Blogger!

It began innocently enough. Leith asked me the other day if we could have a picnic.

“A picnic?”

“Yes, mama. On a blanket. With food we can eat with our fingers.”

It made sense. We’d done it in the summer a few times on the university grounds across the street. We packed sandwiches and juice and took the wagon and a few books and a Frisbee. It had been a lot of fun and obviously something he remembered enjoying.

I tried to explain to him that it’s too cold out right now for a picnic. He said we could wear our snow pants. I tried to explain to him that I don’t own snow pants. He told me I could borrow his rain pants if I wanted. I tried explaining to him that his pants don’t fit me, but he was already ticking off food items on his list of must-haves for our impending picnic.

I ended the conversation by asking him to get his boots on because it was time for school and breathed a sigh of relief when the conversation turned to a discussion of where the elevator went after it dropped us off (for some reason he has decided that it goes to different buildings and I didn’t have the heart or the energy to explain that our elevator doesn’t moonlight for other apartments). I dropped him off, kissed him goodbye and told him I’d pick him up later.

I felt bad all day. Why couldn’t we have a picnic? We could sit outside in the snow if he really wanted to. But I hate the cold and I hate sitting in it even more. My body simply wasn’t built for Canadian winters and I just couldn’t see myself remaining civil through a meal eaten outside, sitting on the snow, on a minus 20, snowy day.

When I picked him up from school he looked at me expectantly. I smiled and said “let’s go home bud”, like I usually do. He asked me what was for dinner and I told him he’d find out when we got home. He bundled up, grabbed his art he’d been working on and we hit the road for the quick trip home.

Walking through the door he noticed something on the floor in the living room and his eyes lit up. I had set up a picnic for us before picking him up. There were blankets and pillows all over the floor. On one side there was a pile of books and even a football and his scooter. I’d “packed” a basket with milk containers and straws, picnic food and even dessert. He was thrilled.

And what did he say to me when I tucked him into bed later?

“Thank you mama. I loved our picnic. Even if it wasn’t outside. It was the best dinner ever.”

My name is Jennifer and I am addicted to coffee…

For me coffee has always represented a rare species of mysterious devotion. When I was young I was not allowed to drink this bitter, warm beverage that the adults in my life sipped after dinner or with breakfast as though it were the nectar of the Gods. I recall at quite a young age, my grandfather making me toast sticks (toast with peanut butter, cut into narrow sticks that somehow tasted so much better than regular-shaped toast with peanut butter) at the breakfast table in his kitchen; him sipping coffee and me sitting right up close to him, sniffing his coffee and wanting, more than anything, to be granted just one taste.

Now, every morning starts for me with this lovely, supple, brunette cup of bitter yet sweet: searing yet calming; beverage yet feast; that I was finally able to taste for myself in my teenage years. There were times since when I gave up coffee; when my blood pressure was sky-rocketing or when I was so sick or so very pregnant that the mere idea of drinking something that stimulating and flavoursome was simply unbearable. Those times, thank goodness, never lasted long and I haven’t yet had to swear off this beverage for an extended period of time.

Speaking of it, I think I might indulge in a cup right now. What will it be?

Coffee? Decaf? Cappuccino? Espresso?, Latte? There are just so many options. That is one of the beauties of this drink, it can appeal to so many people in its almost infinite varieties. And that is what is so great about having a Tassimo in my kitchen. I can make coffee or tea or hot chocolate exactly the way I want it, when I want it.

And now YOU too can have one in YOUR kitchen! From now (Monday, January 10th) until Friday, January 14th I will be gathering entries. How can you enter? There are a few ways:

1) Send me an email Jennifer [at] domesticgoddes [dot] ca
2) Follow me on Twitter: @Jenngoddess (and send me a quick tweet)
3) Retweet my Tweet about this contest
4) Read and comment on any of my Mummy Eats articles on The Yummy Mummy Club site

You can do all of these once per day only, but that gives you up to four chances, per day, between now and Friday (that’s a lot of chances) to win yourself a brand new Tassimo.

**This contest is open to readers living in the United States and Canada only**

DISCLAIMER: I received the brewer and product for review at no cost and all opinions are my own.