Category: Good things

Recipes: Rhubarb Meringue Cake

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The rhubarb meringue cake is my favourite recipe for rhubarb when it comes into season. This is a Mann family recipe that comes from Boris’ mom, Anne Mann. The ingredients are simple and the taste is usually tart more than sweet to highlight the rhubarb rather than disguise it as one does with strawberry rhubarb pie.

Opening Day of Trout Lake Farmers Market - rhubarb

Anne has shared photos with me of the original recipe hand written in German by her mother. She was kind enough to translate this into English.

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Rhubarb Meringue Cake:

Batter:

  • 80g Butter
  • 80g Sugar
  • 3 Egg Yolks
  • 160 g Flour
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • Rind of 1 Lemon (grated)
  • small amount of milk
  • 750 g Rhubarb, peeled and cut into 2 cm lengths (cut very thick stalks in half lengthwise)

Beat the butter until soft then add the sugar and egg yolks. Beat everything until it’s nice and creamy then add the grated rind of one lemon. Blend in the flour and baking powder with just enough milk to make the batter drop off the spoon.

Meringue:

  • 3 Egg Whites
  • 200 g Icing Sugar
  • Juice of 1 Lemon

Combine ingredients and beat until they form into stiff peaks.

Assembly:
Preheat the oven at 350 degrees. Spread the dough on a greased and floured round springform 9″ baking pan. Add the cut rhubarb pieces on top and then bake for 40 minutes. When the timer goes spread the meringue on top of rhubarb and return to the oven. Bake for another 10 minutes until the meringue is lightly browned on top.

rhubarb-meringuecake

I made my first cake of the season yesterday and it is DELICIOUS. I declare rhubarb season officially open!

The Power of Making

My partner Boris is a far superior cook than I, mostly because he has a passion for the activity whereas my passion for food lies more with the eating of it. Over the five or so years we’ve lived together I’ve steadily handed off the bulk of food preparation to his care, and been very glad of it. I enjoy his good cooking, while he enjoys a clean home and clothes.

This past December I came to the realization that I found the activities of cooking or baking to be extremely stressful. The reason why is because I did these things so rarely I was out of practice and had lost my confidence in working with food.

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I am surrounded by people who are excellent chefs, and I am lucky to share many good meals made by friends, so I suddenly felt pretty shameful about the sad level my food skills had sunk to.

Immediately I made the decision to turn things around. I have been cooking and baking much more often over the past two months, including trying recipes for things I’ve always wanted to make but hadn’t previously tried. (I’m looking at you Lemon Loaf and Okonomiyaki).

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The situation had me reflecting upon the empowering nature of making things by hand. I should never be afraid to try something new, or have the expectation for perfection. I understand this intimately when it comes to art and craft processes, but it also applies to working with food. Thank goodness for the Christmas baking epiphany because now I am empowered to enjoy the creation of food as much as I love the consumption of it.

2013: A Year End Review in Twelve Photos

As in previous years, I thought I’d put together a blog post of twelve photos pulled from my archive on Flickr, one for each month of the year. I was pleasantly surprised to discover I had a variety of photos to choose from even though I haven’t been uploading much to flickr.

The selection is a good mix of paper art and nature photos.


January


February


March


April


May


June


July


August


September


October


November


December

All the best in 2014. May it be a creative year for all.

Christmas Scenes From Bowen Island

I fell off the blogging bandwagon a few weeks back when I came down with the flu. It wiped me out for two weeks and I still wasn’t feeling myself over Christmas. I’ve been pretty consistent about blogging regularly for the past few years, so it bothers me a bit I won’t be meeting my monthly goal of eight posts. Ah well, it can’t be helped.

Boris and I spent last week on Bowen Island for Christmas with his family. I went out walking every day and took many photos of the peaceful scenes.

I hope your Christmas was very merry.

Featured Speaker In December at Creative Mornings Vancouver

On December 6th I will be the featured speaker at Creative Mornings Vancouver. I am both really excited and extremely terrified about this opportunity because I’ve never done any major public speaking like this before.

It’s an honour to be stepping into the role of speaker as I’ve been attending this event since its launch in Vancouver two years ago. The theme for December is Make, which is a perfect fit for me.

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Please check out my profile and Q&A on the Creative Mornings blog »

Creative Mornings is a monthly speaker series that happens on the first Friday of every month, and features creative people from a wide range of professions. The event is free (but ticketed) and tickets are made available on the Monday before the event.

If you’ve never attended before all of the talks by previous speakers are available online. This is a great resource for inspiration, along the lines of Ted Talks or Pecha Kucha.

Cross your fingers. Wish me luck. Say hi if you happen to attend.

The Seeds of Sewing

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Over the summer months I’ve gotten into sewing, purely out of a desire to spruce up our apartment. I’ve had a few little projects in mind for ages but until recently I didn’t have my own sewing machine.

For home improvement project number one I wanted to make new slip covers for the throw pillows that came with our couch. I’ve always disliked the fabric, but rather than buying new pillows I decided to sew covers and choose a fabric to add more colour to the room. Dressew was my source for the bold yellow fabric I came away with.

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Slip covers for the throw pillows on our couch

I sewed them without a pattern but found some ideas online to use as reference. Anne advised and assisted me with the sewing as it’s been a really long time since I’ve used a sewing machine. We finished them in about an hour and a half.

The slip covers were the gateway project that led me to buying a sewing machine of my own, because I knew I wanted to make more things. I went with the tiny and inexpensive SY sewing machine from Ikea because I’d read a review that recommended it as a good starter machine.

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And the next thing I knew I was sewing curtains for the bedroom, once again using fabric sourced from Dressew. As with the pillow cases I did not use a pattern. I kept things simple with minimal detail, and sewed together the patterned fabric with a white backing to block out light. My hanging solution was to purchase curtain rings to clip to the top and not have to fuss about with something more complicated.

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Bedroom curtains

I still have so much to learn about sewing, but at least I am learning as I go. I have another project in mind, still sticking with simple straight lines, but eventually I hope to tackle making my own clothes.

A Love of Landscapes

I’ve been sharing a lot of landscape photos over on Instagram lately. The photos are as much about the big puffy clouds and blue skies as it is about the earth below them.

A bench with a view

A tiny Boris against a great big sky

Farm Country in Delta

Looking good East Vancouver

These were taken a few weekends ago during an outing to Westham Island for strawberries and honey, and a visit with a friend who lives in the Woodward building. Amazing views abounded!

More Scenes from Bowen Island

A few photos from a lovely long weekend on Bowen a week and a half ago. It was a good time for bird watching, as you can see from some of the photos.

North Shore mountains from Howe Sound

There were two Anna’s Hummingbirds constantly visiting the feeder. The view of them was excellent since it’s located just outside the window beside the kitchen table. They are amazing little birds.

Male Anna's Hummingbird

Male Anna's Hummngbird

Male Anna's Hummingbird

The Canada Geese had taken over the Lagoon with their horde of goslings. There were at least thirty of them in one group, watched over by multiple parents. Gosling daycare I suppose.

Goslings and parents

Goslings

Bowen Island a place where there are lovely things to see, rain or shine.

Rain drops on the water

Found Objects: Recommended Internet Reading

In my monthly newsletter I always share three or four links to items I’ve come across that have inspired me. I call the section, “Found Objects”, and I’ve decided to try and continue the same thing here on my blog.

For your May long weekend reading pleasure, I present a few items you should check out:

  • Mixed media artist, Carlyn Yandle, writes one blog post a week about art. Each one is well-written, thoughtful, and insightful.
  • Ditto for blog posts written by M.A. Tateishi, another Vancouver artist with excellent writing skills.
  • Money Money Money, a series of blog posts by Kim Werker on money struggles for the creative person. It was inspired by a letter I wrote to her.
  • A beautiful post about body image and confidence by Vivienne McMaster. It speaks strongly to how women tear themselves down, but can also build themselves up.

Have yourself a relaxing long weekend.