Elisen Lebkuchen (Geman "Gingerbread")

I got this recipe a few years ago, but never tried it until this weekend.  My dad was humming and hawing over Skype that Oma made Elisen Lebkuchen and they were sooo good.  I asked for the recipe and it turned out to be the one I must have asked for a few years ago... Feeling guilty, I roped one of my teenagers and her friend into a baking session.
The original recipe is in German and has "sehr gut" scribbled on it.  And indeed it is "sehr gut", very good.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 150g butter
• 250g Zucker
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp cacao
• 1/2 tsp ground gloves
• 200g lemon peel and 200g orange peel - I used 400g finely chopped apricots and prunes)
• 300g ground hazelnuts
• 200g sultanas, soaked in water - I used cranberries
• 1/4 l milk
• 500g flour
• 2 tblsp baking powder
• 4 drops bitter mandel oil - you can find this in European Deli's - Dr. Oetker brand)
• Back Oblaten (7cm circumference) - this is edible paper and you can also find this at an European Deli
• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• juice of 1 lemon

Cream butter, sugar and eggs.  Add spices, orange and lemon peel, hazelnuts, sultanas and flour.  Add milk last.  Spread doug about 1cm thick onto Backoblaten.    Place on cookie sheets.
Bake for 20min  at 200 degrees Celsius (180 degrees in a convection oven).
Immediately after baking, glaze with mixture made from icing sugar and lemon juice.  Yields 4 baking sheets

German Stollen

4 Stollen (double recipe)

Stollen is a traditional German Christmas bread full of nuts, candied fruit and raisins with a marzipan filling.  Most recipes use yeast, mine calls for Quark and baking powder and I replaced the candied fruits and raisins with dried cranberries.

Ingredients:

• 500g flour
• 1tblsp baking powder
• 275g unsalted butter
• 200g sugar
• a few drops vanilla extract or a packet of vanilla sugar
• pinch salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 tblsp rum
• grated fresh lemon peel
• 1/4 tsp cardamom and nutmeg
• 250g quark (you can substitute with Greek yoghurt)
• 50g pistachios
• 100g walnut pieces
• 100g dried cranberries
• 125g marzipan
• 2 tsp icing sugar

Mix flour and 175g soft butter, add eggs, sugar, baking powder, vanilla, salt, eggs, rum, lemon peel, quark, nuts and cranberries and mix to a dough ball.  Gently roll dough out to form an oval.  With the marzipan form a log and place on dough.  fold dough over to make a loaf.

Bake at 175C in preheated oven for 1 hours (or if you are making two smaller loafs, bake 40min).  Remove from oven and immediately brush with remaining butter and sprinkle with icing sugar.  Let cool completely.  Can be eaten fresh or wrapped in foil and stored for a week.

Fairmont Road Hot Pepper Jelly

This has been a family favourite. The sauce goes well with potatoes and pork and is spicy but sweet.

What you need:

• 10 x 500ml canning jars with lids, clean and sterilized

Ingredients:

• 5-6 large fleshy red bell peppers
• 50 red hot chilli peppers
• 3 cups of vinegar
• 12 cups of sugar
• 2 boxes (4 sachets) of liquid Certo

How To:

Remove stems, pulp and seeds from bell peppers.  Careful when handling hte peppers.  Either wear gloves or make sure not to touch your face and eyes for days ;-)
Puree all peppers in food processor.  Combine pepper mixture, vinegar and sugar in stock pot.  Bring to a rolling boil and simmer for 20min.  Add liquid Certo and boil on high for 1 minute longer.  Ladle hot mixture into sterilized, hot jars and close lids.  Vaccuum should build and all lids should "pop".

Evening Ocean Swims

This summer I rekindled an old love. No, old Jackson has nothing to fear, this relationship is strictly platonic.

I always had a fascination with water.  As a child, I would jump into every puddle, no matter how cold.  Even now, I could not imagine a holiday away from water.  I need to dip in, often before everybody else is up and enjoy the coolness of the fresh water on my skin.

For years I have regretted living so close to the ocean, yet hardly ever going for swims.  Almost every summer, I hope to hit the water more often, but apart from going to the beach with the kids before they hit the teenage years, I never had or made the time.

This year was different. I can't remember if it was my friend Wendy or me who suggested it first, but either way, the other was an easy sell and we started going to Ambleside Beach for weekly evening swims sometime in early August.

We usually would be there just before the sun was setting, although once or twice it was pretty dark by the time we got out.  Because of the cold winter, spring and early summer, the water never reached comfortable summer temperatures, but remained more or less frigid, depending on the amount of waves and sunshine.  After a couple of times, we had our routine worked out.  Dressed in bathing suit, capris and shirt, we'd be at the water's edge in no time.  Wendy tended to take for ever to get in, while I jumped in and them froze to death waiting for her to get ready for our swim. Later in the summer, I smarted up and waited until Wendy was at least in to her waist, before getting wet.

Most evenings, we managed about 20-30 min of breaststroke.  Attempts to crawl were quickly abandoned because the freezing water would give us 'icecream' headaches.  Initially, we would swim out the the buoys, then east towards the Welcoming Statue and back again.  When the temperatures were almost unbearable and the buoys hauled in for the fall, we just swim along the shoreline over the 'the man" and back.  Only once did we bail after getting in the water and realizing that it was just too cold.

Swimming in the evening was a perfect zen ending to often stressfull days.  The sky would be pink and orange, the mountains of Vancouver Island looming purple in the distance.  The setting sun would bath the North Shore Mountains in a golden glow and more often then not we'd see seals poking their heads out of the waves nearby and fish jumping.

Wendy's Cheese Fondue

This has become a favorite of Wendy and me...so far, we only made it when Jackson was out for meetings...hopefully, he'll get to taste it soon, too.

Ingredients:

• 1 glove garlic halved cross wise 
• 1.5 cups dry white whine
• 250g Gruyere grated
• 250g Emmental grated
• 250g Raclette grated
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tblsp corn starch
• fresh nutmeg
• 1 bsp Kirsch
• ground white pepper

How To:

Rub fondue pot with garlic. Heat wine on medium to low. When liquid bubbles add cheese, stirring constantly until melted.
Whisk together lemon juice and cornstarch. Stir into cheese mix. Season.

Serve with yellow nugget potatoes, fresh bread, pickles, grape tomatoes, mushrooms and salad.

Icy Dreams

Spring break... a few days off work and unsuccessful in motivating the teens in the house to do something memorable. What better to do than abandon the teens and dig a snow cave on a nearby mountain!

Once the decision was made, we piled our gear haphazardly into the overnight backpacks hoping not to forget essential items. It's been a while that we backpacked and we left with the nagging feeling that we did leave something important behind. The kids, perhaps?

I kept my escape route wide open. My plan was to build the cave, have dinner and then assess the situation. My plan B was to hightail it back to the parking lot and drive home to a warm bed. Ean was determined to spent the night, no matter what.
We drove up to Mount Seymour and bundled up for the short hike to First Lake. Already the temperatures were much colder than we had expected. Instead of hovering around 0 degrees Celsius, as they had for the last few days, it was clearly below freezing and a deep layer of fresh, fluffy powder covered the hills. As we hiked the 20min in on the Dog Mountain trail, most other hikers were heading the other direction, back to the parking lot.
The spot we picked for our inaugural snow cave is a popular one for winter house builders. In previous years we had marvelled at some pretty amazing structures in the little glade just a few steps off the trail out of sight of the day trippers. This year, too, there was evidence of previous building activity. Ean started digging in the hope of finding the entrance to a prefab ice cave, but no luck.

Unlike Ean's dream of sleeping in a snow cave my igloo building ambitions started much earlier. As a little girl, every winter, I piled up all available snow in the effort to build a shelter. Unfortunately, with the exception of one memorable record snowfall in the 70s, we never had enough snow to succeed. The closest I came was building a little shelter, big enough for my dolls and a tea light ;-)

One long ago winter, just before starting a family, Ean expressed his wish to go winter camping. Now, I camped in all kind of adverse weather and can't say I enjoy fighting the elements when trying to sleep.

However, being pregnant with our first child, I figured, that if we do not get out to camp in the snow this winter, it won't happen for a long time. And right I was. The night in our little blue tent near the Red Heather shelter in Garibaldi Park and a frigid night in a tent with the kids on Dog Mountain a few years ago, were the last times we entertained notions of winter camping. Until now...

It took Ean about 3 hours of digging to build a cave big enough for the two of us and our gear. In the process, he did discover the remnants of an igloo built earlier in the winter. For those

unfamiliar with snow cave building, the idea is to sleep higher than your entrance tunnel, to

keep the warmer air in. Ean dug a creative version of this...first digging down, making a big enough area for him to stand and then dig up and in. My task was to move the snow piece he pushed to the entrance away and running around in circles to keep warm.

Around 6:00pm I decided it was time to cook dinner. Melting snow is a tedious effort and takes forever. Not having the stove sink into the melting snow is a whole different story altogether. By 8:00 we finally cozied up in

the cave with red wine, chicken noodle soup and mac'n cheese. I still was undecided if I should stay for the night or hightail it out. Needless to say that with a belly full of warm food and huddled in my sleeping bag, I opted to tough it out. We called our teens right from the cave, to let them know their parents were still alive and of course to check if they hadn't burnt the house down yet.

The night was not comfortable ;-) It was cold. The sleeping platform wasn't level and a tad too short for me. The thought of masses of snow above me unsettled my dreams. Ean snored. He

claims I snored. I had to pee... Definitely room

for improvement and with Ean planning to make this an annual adventure, we might just have a perfect night next year.

Emerging out of our hole around 8:30am the next morning we found a blizzard had blown in over night and dumped about 30cm of snow. Breaking camp only took a few minutes and after hiking through fresh, untouched powder back to the parking lot, we soon found ourselves in a cafe, enjoying a steaming mug of coffee and a cinnamon bun. Here's to next season's winter adventure.
Lessons learned:

• Make sure Jackson brings spare, dry clothes and gloves!
• Bring extra clothes for Jackson, just in case ;-)
• Bring light wooden board to cook on
• check the lighters, bring extra
• Wear jacket with hood
• Bring ear plugs