Month: March 2017

Dr. Seuss’s Birthday

Yesterday, March 2nd, was famous children’s author Dr. Seuss’s birthday; he would have been 113 this year. This year his birthday coincided with UNESCO World Book Day in the UK (they have other holidays on April 23rd, which is when the rest of the world marks it, so for the UK it’s the first Thursday in March). I’m sure that Mr. Geisel would have approved.

Dr. Seuss’s birthday is a big thing for preschool children around here. Teachers generally spend at least a day focusing on his fabulous books; some even stretch it out into a whole week of activities. The environmental themes in The Lorax alone can spread to an entire sciene unit! I read all of the Dr. Seuss books as a child (except for the few that have been published since), and when the time came to read them to my own children, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. They have such great rhythm that I don’t mind reading them again and again. It’s a good thing, too, because when my kids like a book, I end up reading it until I could recite it in my sleep.

To celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday, I made Green Eggs and Ham for dinner. (I was going to read the book to my youngest as well, but apparently her teachers had beaten me to the punch, so we enjoyed Fox In Socks instead.) The eggs were simple scrambled eggs with grated cheddar cheese and a bit of chopped parsley, with a couple of drops of food colouring to provide the virulent green. I couldn’t figure out any way to safely turn the ham green, so I just cut slices of PC Free From Smoked Ham and dry-fried them in a non-stick pan. I also baked a loaf of Fast White Bread (2006 edition, page 597) and scooped some honeydew melon to supplement all that protein.

For dessert I made The Cat’s Hat Parfaits; you can find the recipe via Seussville.com. My kids loved it, and it’s a very healthy dessert (basically just berries and yogurt), so I didn’t mind serving it. In our house, dessert is generally reserved for special occasions.

Lastly, here are my Thing 1 and Thing 2. This picture is ancient now. They were so wee! I made the Thing 1 costume for the Halloween prior to that Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and I was lucky that it still fit in time for her to wear it to preschool. It’s an adapted Simplicity pajama pattern made from stretch cotton, and it was so comfy that she never tired of wearing it. The Thing 2 set was bought at Chapters before my Thing 2 was born.

Dad’s Biscuits (Baking Soda Biscuits) Recipe

One of the things I loved best as a child when coming in on a cold, blustery day was opening the door to the house and having the smell of fresh-baked biscuits wash over me. To me the smell goes along with the orange glow of incandescent lights shining through a window over a dark, snow-covered landscape. It is the scent of hanging up your sled or skates, taking off your snowsuit, and coming in for dinner.

Dad’s biscuits are one of the dishes for which he is best known; childhood friends of mine fondly remember them and often requested his recipe when they moved away from home. The biscuits were more of a winter dish, not because they are heavy, but because firing up the oven on a hot day was tantamount to sacrilege. However, my Nan (Dad’s mom) occasionally used these biscuits instead of cake when she made us a fresh berry trifle during summer visits.

My mother actually wrote down this recipe in the back of her Purity Cookbook (my second-favourite cookbook, after the Joy of Cooking). She copied it from my Nan’s recipe, who had in turn gotten it from my grandfather. Unfortunately, he died long before I was born, so I can’t ask him where he got it, but I suspect that he learned it when he took his turn cooking when working as a lumberjack in northern New Brunswick.

Dad’s Biscuits (Baking Soda Biscuits)
Yields 10-12 biscuits

Preheat oven to 450°F (230°C)
In a large bowl, mix together:
– 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 1 tsp baking soda
– 2 tsp cream of tartar*
– 1 tsp salt
– 2 tsp sugar
Into the dry ingredients, place:
– 1/2 cup lard**
With a pastry blender or two knives, cut lard into the flour until the pieces of lard are no bigger than a pea.
To the mixture, add:
– 1 cup milk***
With a sturdy spoon, stir in the milk until the mixture comes together into a single mass, as in the above photo.

Grease a cookie sheet. Use a tablespoon to scoop the dough into ten to twelve roughly equal-sized portions (as per above photo). Leave at least an inch between each biscuit, as they will rise. You may have to use more than one cookie sheet to prevent the biscuits from sticking together; you may cook them in batches or side-by-side in the oven if your oven is large enough to accommodate.

Alternately, if you prefer more evenly-sized biscuits, you may roll out the dough onto a floured surface to between 3/4″ and 1″ thick. Use a round cookie cutter (one may be fashioned by cutting both ends out of a small soup can, removing the label, and giving it a good wash) or a floured drinking glass with straight sides to cut the biscuits to a uniform size.

Bake biscuits for 10 to 12 minutes at 450°F (230°C). Remove biscuits from cookie sheet and place onto cooling rack immediately after removing from oven.

These biscuits taste best the day they are baked (even better when served straight from the oven), although they will keep at room temperature in a sealed container for a few days. Make sure that they are fully cooled before they are stored, as otherwise they will go soggy.

*4 tsp baking powder may be substituted if you omit the cream of tartar and baking soda.
**Butter or vegetable shortening may be substituted for lard.
***Water may be substituted for milk.

This recipe is versatile and can be modified many different ways to create the best accompaniment to your meal.

Cheese Biscuits
Add 1/2 to 3/4 cup grated sharp cheese to the dry ingredients.

Red-Lobster-Style Cheddar Biscuits
Add 3/4 cup grated old cheddar cheese to the dry ingredients. After biscuits are baked, melt 1/2 cup butter or margarine and stir in 1/2 tsp garlic powder. While it is all still hot, brush the garlic butter mixture over the biscuits.

Rosemary Biscuits
Add 1 Tbsp dried rosemary to the dry ingredients.

Raisin Biscuits
Add 1/2 cup raisins to the dry ingredients.

Cinnamon Roll Biscuits
After dough is mixed, roll it out onto a floured surface into a rough rectangle about 1/4″ thick. In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup sugar with 2 Tbsp cinnamon. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture evenly over the entire top of the dough. Roll the dough into a tube, then slice it into 1/2″ slices with a sharp knife or unflavoured dental floss. Bake as you would plain biscuits.

Sweet Biscuits
Add 1 Tbsp sugar or brown sugar to the dry ingredients. Use sweet biscuits instead of cake when making fresh berry trifle or individual strawberry shortcakes.

All of the biscuits taste lovely when spread with butter or margarine. The plain and sweet versions also pair well with jams, jellies, and fruit butters. The plain and savoury ones also work with meats (hot and cold) and savoury soups.

Loco Moco

I am being completely honest when I tell you that I know absolutely very little about Hawaiian cuisine. It’s not just for reasons of distance; Hawaii is something like 5,000km from here, but Japan is about twice that, and I do know some things about Japanese food. Yet I can’t think of a single Hawaiian restaurant in this city. I’ve never seen any classes offered locally on how to cook Hawaiian food. We just don’t have a lot of Hawaiian people who have immigrated here, and who would blame them when you compare their tropical paradise with our frozen Canadian winters?

Given my lack of knowledge on the subject, it should surprise no one that I was stumped the other day when a Food Network show I was watching started talking about Loco Moco. Running the words through an online translator yielded, disturbingly, “crazy mucus” from Spanish — an unfortunate name, but no worse than “toad in the hole” or “bubble and squeak”. I then learned through Wikipedia that “the traditional loco moco consists of white rice, topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and brown gravy”. “Well,” I thought, “That doesn’t sound hard. Let’s give it a go.”

I used the first recipe that came up when I searched for “Loco Moco recipe”: Guy Fieri’s Loco Moco. I don’t have any context to know how accurate this recipe is, but it was very tasty. Even my children requested that I make this comfort food again, and they are my harshest critics. Be warned, though, that this recipe says that it makes two servings, but it made enough for my family of four with leftovers. I know food portions are generally larger in the US, but do you really need a whole cup of rice (before cooking, so about two cups cooked), two quarter-pound hamburgers, and two fried eggs per person? That’s one heck of a lot of food.

Since we liked this dish so much, I think I may look into more Hawaiian dishes when I have the chance. Poké looks delicious, given that I love the sushi bowls that it resembles (and there are some restaurants in town that serve it now). Spam musubi looks like fun as well.