Category Archives: Uncategorized

Ummmmm…..Hi?

Posted on by zollipop
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Sorry for skipping out for a year. I had some serious moping to do.

Loss and trauma can make a girl all mixed up. So mixed up, in fact, that she can confuse passion and obsession and give up on the things she adores the most. I thought, in my fog, that my love of cooking was an obsession, a distraction, an unhealthy tic.

Never one for grey zones, I did a really good job at losing my appetite. During the worst times, I was sick to my stomach frequently – a rejection of comfort and nutrition brought on by the combination of terror and too much wine. My beautifully curated spice collection wound up in a box and my darling husband unflinchingly endured months of takeout. My precious cookbooks? Also boxed, as a result of a chain of events that still doesn’t seem totally real to me.

But here we are now, because slowly food brought me back. I started cooking again with some ambivalence, an indifferent flip of the spatula here and there. I begrudgingly admitted that my Smoked Chicken and Curried Cast-Iron Potatoes were really tasty. I began to notice a correlation between my improved mental health and what made it to the dinner table.

And that’s when I knew that in my fog, I had made a mistake. With several good meals under my belt, I realized that obsessions destroy us, but passions make us whole again.

So, hi.

Cheers.

Posted on by zollipop
7

A funny thing happened in Paris:  I went there in August, shortly after my last post, looking for food.  I was down in the dumps and I figured some solid French meals would cheer me up.

Then, walking down a cobblestone side street in the Jewish Pletzl, I lost my appetite.  I don’t just mean for the imminent meal (falafel, what else?) – but I lost my craving for the ‘next great meal’ in general.  I considered the possibility that I was depressed.  But I don’t think that’s it, exactly.

Rewind fifteen years: I’m sitting on a hand-me-down couch from my grandparent’s basement, in a city far away from home.  I don’t own a cookbook, but I do own a TV.  The TV is sitting on a cardboard box, draped in a scrap of cloth from the bargain bin.  The cloth is brown with lighter brown stars. I have just been dumped by my boyfriend and it’s Friday night, so I am watching TV by myself.

But I have just made a bowl of the proverbial homemade chicken noodle soup, and each slurp calms my frazzled soul.  So much so that when the budget allows it, I buy a set of good quality pots before a new couch or a TV stand.

And then came the cookbooks, dozens of them, hundreds of them.  Phenomenal meals (if I do say so myself) came out of my kitchen.  Men arrived. Men left, or more often were asked to leave, but the meals kept coming. Eventually one man, a truly wonderful man, arrived and stayed.  He too likes my cooking.

I started writing about food, researching things like perogies and bacon with librarian-like meticulousness. For a time, I was obsessed with pearl barley.

Through phyllo dough and cheese fondue and roasted eggplants I set things right in my world – I added and subtracted and tinkered and stirred, and always came out with something tasty in the end.

But in August, something went really wrong, something too big to contain in a pot on my stove. And my need to tinker and stir, well, that evaporated, right along with my desire to write about it.

It really happened in an instant, right on that side street in Paris.  Poof! I plunked down on a stoop, cried a bit as passersby averted their eyes, then I went and ambivalently ate a falafel.

In the four months since then, I have thought a lot about my relationship with food, and I have come up with some ideas. Ideas which, in my mind, are too private and precious to write about in bite-sized snippets on a blog.

So I thank you, sincerely, for joining me for appetizers over the past two years. And for your tremendous and unexpected support. I’m done here for now, but I do hope you’ll join me for the main course, which should be ready to eat in a couple of years.

Cheers.

The Forks Market: Keeping Zolli Humble

Posted on by zollipop
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I was getting all set to proclaim myself a hero, a god-like figure perhaps, when a basket full of shrivelled kiwis shocked me back to reality.  Around this time last year, I had marched into the Forks Management office, armed with a dessicated rutabaga, some gonad analogies and a camera. The nice young lady I spoke with responded neutrally to my concerns.  A year went by.  The produce continued to suck.

So imagine my shock and awe when I walked into the Forks to see that Tutti Frutti, that purveyor of rotten food so vividly chronicled here and here, was Tutti Gonzo! In its place: Casa Bella.  The produce looked great!  The staff seemed to be arranging it, picking it over, just like in a proper market!!!  The meat at the affiliated counter looked fresh.  There was some artfully displayed, colorful antipasto – a wise choice if considering perishability.

Casa Bella

I started imagining how I would take all the credit for the change, fresh off my success from being recognized by Saveur. Were the ‘powers that be’ reading my blog?  Is waving around a dried up vegetable in someone’s office actually impactful?   Would they erect a statue of me the junction of our two mighty rivers? I would collaborate with the sculptor – posing with a basket of root vegetables thrust towards the sky. Would we decide to minimize the size of my nose, or maximize it for full Grecian goddess effect?

But most importantly, could I finally start shopping for food at the Forks?  Anything seemed possible, the sky was mine.  So today, armed with a shopping list, I drove down to The Forks.

I was crestfallen when I neared the fruit vendor and heard a man say with an East Indian accent, “No, no, no, my goodness, a mango should be full … plump even!”.   I saw him gesturing like he was holding a D-cup between his two hands.  He and his friend walked past, shaking their heads at what passed for a mango in Winnipeg.

And so, my dreams of grandeur ended. Although the State of the Vendor is much better than it was last year, there is still room for improvement. They are definitely making some good efforts – there were some big baskets of local strawberries and BC cherries.  But why why why why why is there a row of Kraft dinner above the (empty) local tomato basket?  Why aren’t there big beautiful bags of our local Nature’s Harvest pasta there instead?  Do you really want me to buy coriander that is sitting in a tub of brown water? Did you not consider that if you purchase a massive bin of corn, it will start to wither before you can sell it all?

Who thinks this is a good idea?

Perfect for Vichyssoise

Local Tomatoes and Kraft Dinner

Yummy

Kiwis - Taking me back in time to that rutabaga that looked like Gandalf's scrotum

Please tell me these are plantains

The sales clerk saw me snapping photos, and taking me for a tourist, he started chatting with me about how he too owned a Canon.  And while I humoured him with reciprocated pleasantry, what I felt like doing was leaping on top of his counter, brandishing one of his mushy mangoes, and asking, “How could you dare make small talk with me when THIS is in my line of sight!!”. (I would froth at the mouth slightly for effect.)

Still working on it

Mmmmmmmangoes!!!!

In the final analysis, it looks like there is still some work to do. While it looked like The Forks was turning the corner at, “Keeping Life Delicious”, it’s possible that all they have done was Keep Zolli Humble. I would like to think that the former would have been a greater accomplishment.

(Note: since this post, further attempts have been made to keep Zolli humble in the form of strongly worded comments about ripe bananas, mangoes, and kiwis. I am content to respectfully disagree and stand by my post. Someone obviously took this post very personally – in the end, if that translates into better produce at The Forks, I am happy to say Mission Accomplished.  I am glad there are other people who are passionate about making the Forks into a true market.

Please don't try to tell me these are ripe. The one on the left is so mushy it has a dent in it.

I’ll be the first person to admit that I am not a chef or a farmer. I am a food consumer.  But I have travelled the world visiting its great markets, and I am a faithful buyer from Vic’s and Crampton’s. You just don’t see brown/rotting/shrivelled/overripe food there – ever – nor do you see it at St. Norbert’s Farmers Market or any of the great markets of the world. But the sad fact is that consumers will walk away for years if they visit a store and are unable to buy dinner because the quality is suboptimal, even once.)

That said, I have revised the post with some additional photos of the more handsome produce at Casa Bella in an attempt to balance off my reader’s concerns.  Thank you everyone for your comments – and Casa Bella owners – keep at it – you’re almost there.  Let’s just chalk this up to growing pains and move on. But please get rid of the Kraft Dinner.)

Dinner to go - good idea!

Good lookin' BC cherries

Local strawberries - nice!

Sticking it to the City: Revenge of the Acer Negundo

Posted on by zollipop
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Unbeknownst to me, the house I purchased 8 years ago didn’t really have a sewer system. Two odiferous basement floods and an insurance nightmare later, it turned out that my sewer main had been draining into a de facto septic pit under the asphalt of my Riverview street.  While installing a storm drain some years ago, the City of Winnipeg had transected my sewer line, and for years the trees around my house grew enviably greener than those of my neighbours.

A grand historic elm on my boulevard became collateral damage during the sewer repair, leaving us with a hot spot on our roof and a depressing bald patch in the landscaping. And even though the City allows me to mow the boulevard grass once a week, they won’t, apparently, allow me to plant a new tree on it without going through a process which might rival a patent application in complexity.

So, in selecting a tree from their pre-approved list of ‘Trees the City Will Let Me Pay to Plant on the Boulevard’, accessible on their website under the ‘How to Make the Taxpayer Assume Responsibility for the City’s Mistakes’ tab, I was feeling a little, ahem, bitter.  Was there any way I could exact sweet revenge?

Enter the Acer negundo (Manitoba Maple) and a small flask of Frosty’s Manitoba Maple syrup.

While Canada produces 80% of the world’s maple syrup, the Manitoba syrup market is relatively untapped.  This might be due to the fact that the indigenous Manitoba Maple produces less sap than its cousin the sugar maple, although a 1992 Feasibility Report states that the syrup-making Trappist Monks in Holland, Manitoba harvest yields equal to that of the Quebec maple. So drill a spigot into any Acer negundo greater than 8″ in diameter, and you can expect a flow of 1-10L/day in the March tapping season, which might run anywhere from 2-14 days.  Read more here for background info and here for a detailed how-to guide. At a sugar concentration of 2%, you can boil a mere 43L of sap into 1L of edible maple syrup, which you can sell for $15.00.  Or you can pour it on your pancakes.

Manitoba Maple syrup is reputed to have a nuttier and more complex taste than its Eastern Canadian counterpart.  And since the product is rare, organic, hand-made, and shelf-stable, it could feasibly hit the gourmet mail-order big times and take its place alongside Alaea Hawaiian Pink Salt and Greek Orange Blossom Honey on the virtual shelf.

So I’ll apply to plant a Manitoba Maple on the boulevard that I mow but don’t own. The city will own the tree once it’s planted –  although I am sure they will permit me to rake the leaves come September.

Then I will sap the city’s tree (that I bought and planted) of its sap.  It’s probably illegal to tap maple trees on the boulevard, but the city won’t notice – they are too busy training 311 operators to block my access to anyone that knows anything. My parents have a massive Manitoba Maple in their yard, which with its five trunks could easily accommodate as many spigots.  I figure that if I take a week off work in March, and invest in an industrial sized sap evaporator, I could probably make 4-5 L of syrup, grossing me $75.00 or so.

Then I’ll use my earnings to pay two weeks worth of  property taxes. Ah, sweet revenge.

What a waste of time, you say? Aren’t you just going to end up tired and sticky with not much to show for it, you ask? Perhaps.  But the sweet sweat of the that tree will taste better than a lawsuit.

Interested in trying Manitoba Maple Syrup?  My Boulevard Maple should be mature enough to start production in about 10 years. Email me in 2022 and ask for Boulevard Revenge Syrup.

Otherwise, purchase Frosty’s locally at Crampton’s Market, or online through their mail order site.

Zolli’s Pasta Narcisse

Posted on by zollipop
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The revelations I have every morning in the shower usually seem brilliant to me at the time, and odd to everyone else later.   Such is the case with Pasta Narcisse, a made-in-Manitoba dish born out of my contemplation of snake mating balls.

Every May, tens of thousands of red garter snakes get their game on in Narcisse, Manitoba, about 130 km north of Winnipeg along Highway 17.  It’s an epic event – a swirling, seething mass of serpiginous horniness.

Not only do the red garter snakes emerge from the ground in May: local asparagus begins to make an appearance in markets.

So, in a tremendous confrontation of synapses, with the sound of hallucinatory cymbals in the background, it occurred to me as I was rinsing out my conditioner that asparagus looks like snakes, and pasta looks like snakes, and for that matter green onions look like snakes, and oh my god I’ve had too much coffee but wouldn’t this make a great made-in-Manitoba pasta dish?

It also occurred to me that snakes probably have really bad garlic-and-onion breath, an aftertaste from their acquaintance with Lucifer. So what about a whirl of local pasta, mixed with fresh asparagus and onions, bound together with a classic olive oil and garlic sauce?  Mmmmmm…..Cue:  Pasta Narcisse (click link to handwritten recipe)

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