Heritage Row Reno

January 30, 2012

We love local: WALL ART!!

This is the first installation of ‘We love local’, where we introduce some of our favourite local items and ideas!

Our inaugural post celebrates art bought and bartered in St. John’s, limited to anything and everything that may be hung on walls.

Ryan Ryan and his lovely partner were weekly vendors at the St. John’s Farmers Market. Ryan² has a very colourful style that embraces the vibrancy of this city, and his depictions of the famous jellybean row houses are obviously right up our alley!

Our favourite former candidate for Ward 2 councillor is Andrew Harvey, who also happens to be our favourite wallpaper artist. As an anthropology/archaeology MA, this Darwin poster definitely appealed to me. Its mate is an image decrying unicorns. I think. Both are hanging in the office.

Graham Blair creates fantastical limited editions from carved hardwood reliefs. Many of his images are simple depictions of animals. He’s a very popular ~monthly vendor at the St. John’s Farmers Market, along with his wife Emily and her waffles!! We decided on two images, Crows and Red Fox, to bring home for framing. Blair provides his limited editions with archival packaging, and ours survived the 2 months they were kicking around the office. We took advantage of a recent custom framing sale for archival preservation (definitely don’t want fading or discolouring).

We decided the framed prints would perfectly accompany a framed nautical chart of Northern Labrador, a Christmas gift from A. to J. after our adventure above the tree line.

PgP Photography is headed by Patsy Gosse, the ever-smiling photographer at The St. John’s Farmers Market. This is an amazing image of capelin, tiny fish that “roll in” each summer. Read more about the capelin phenomenon! The photo came with the double mat attached, and we framed it with a ready-made.

We framed another two of Patsy’s photos, depicting icy beach stones after a frost, and an urchin sitting on purple rocks. These are paired up in the hall leading to the kitchen.

St. John’s is lucky to have two Heritage Shops flanking the downtown core, which sell all types of handcrafted local products. I found this lovely print of Newfoundland whales for only $5! The print is based on a lithograph by Don Wright of Folly Head Studio.

We love local!

A Helpful Hobby

Over the holidays, J spent a lot of time in his work shop undertaking two small projects that would revolutionize our day-to-day existence. Okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but his cutlery drawer divider and vinyl box have greatly improved the organization of items we use on a daily basis. J reclaimed some heritage floor boards, stripping out decades of nicks and stains, revealing a smooth new surface full of swirly grain patterns. For the record box sides and bottom, he used maple plywood.

My favourite quote during this project came when J was sealing the record box for the ninth time, and said “you know, Norm Abram only does seven coats of varnish.” So put that in your pipe, Mr. Abram, and gaze at the perfection that is nine coats:

Finishing caps are reclaimed oak, sides are maple plywood.

J stained the cutlery divider the same colour we used on the some other wood details in our kitchen, like the kick plates on bottom of our cupboards.

He measured each space to fit our organizational needs, and it fit! Hooray!

A measuring spoon compartment! Wheee! Peelers and corkscrews, together at last. Also, a space for the smallest spoons, which I have always preferred. Even the dog is excited about it.

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Filed under Arts+Crafts, Kitchen

January 9, 2012

Real Fruit Leather

I had *a lot* of unsweetened organic applesauce that I bought during a weak moment at Costco, so I decided to get rid of some jars by making all natural fruit roll-ups!

There are loads of recipes and instructions online, and I used advice from many sources. Since I thought the fan in the back of our dehydrator would blow parchment paper around, I rolled five of my stainless steel trays with oven-safe plastic wrap. I set the temperature at 68°C/140°F.

On each of the five trays, I spread ~2 1/2 cups of applesauce from the centre outwards, in a rough rectangle. I chopped up some of the cherries, bananas, and apples I dehydrated last week, and added some shredded coconut. Spreading the fruit on the applesauce in different arrangements, I decided to keep 2 of the trays plain, with nothing added.

After 6 hours, we have delightfully chewy fruit leather. My favourite is the cherry, banana, apple and coconut sheet, but they’re all tasty!

Dehydrated apples sprinkled over left side. Dehydrated cherries, bananas, apples, and shredded coconut on right side.

Plain ol' apple.

Close up...

Giant, healthy, homemade fruit roll-ups!

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Filed under Arts+Crafts, Food

January 2, 2012

The Year of the Dehydrator

We’ve wanted to invest in a food dehydrator for a long time, and for Christmas J surprised me with a TSM D-10 Stainless Steel model! I couldn’t be happier with the sleek, square design with plentiful space, and in knowing the reputation of the manufacturer, The Sausage Maker in Buffalo, NY.

Our main interest was in drying meat to make jerky, but there are sooo many uses for our new toy. Here’s a panel on the control space showing suggested temperatures for the various applications.

To make our first batch of beef jerky, J chose a flank steak and cut strips both with and against the grain of the meat. Cutting with the grain supposedly gave a more chewy texture, while cutting against the grain provides a crunchy texture. We selected and tweaked two differing recipes, and divided the with-grain and against-grain cuts into equal parts, and sealed each grouping into bags of marinade for 12 hours. The next day, J took the pieces from his marinade, and tenderized the strips.

Couldn't find the ol' meat mallet, so he improvised. Pounded the 1/4 inch strips to 1/8 inch thickness.

His marinade has a hint of heat owing to chili pepper flakes, but also contains honey. My marinade is sweeter, made with brown sugar, smoked paprika, liquid smoke. Both marinades contain Worcestershire and soy sauce, with other seasonings.

His marinade on the left, mine on the right.

Cover plate slides on, and has a hole in the center for a thermometer. The vents blow out the best scents of all time. The jerky stays in for 4-5 hours at ~150 degrees.

FINISHED! Mine in the forefront.

J's jerky is darker, and you can see the chili pepper flakes.

We can’t be humble here: the jerky is seriously the best we’ve ever had! We didn’t add any preservatives like sodium nitrate, so our jerky would be refrigerated if we planned to keep it longer than a month (and we knew it would be devoured in days). Great success in our first round of jerky making, and no botulism so far!

For round 2, we tweaked our first marinades, and did a third with teriyaki sauce as a main component. Using a large eye of round, J cut 1/4 thick strips both against and with the grain. He also chose not to tenderize the strips this time, to compare the texture with the last batch.

From eye of roundsville...

...to jerky city!

Next on the list was experimentation with some mangoes and kiwis, with excellent results! I washed and peeled the mangoes, and just washed the kiwis. I cut 1/4-1/2 inch strips off the mangoes, then sliced the kiwis (skin on) in 1/4 inch rounds. Dipping all of the fruit in pineapple juice to prevent browning, I then arranged the pieces on the stainless steel racks.

After ~9 hours at 130 degrees, we had kiwis with lip-puckering flavour, and deliciously sweet mango slices. I have no need for candy ever again!

Today I assembled 5 bananas, 3 cups of cherries, 4 pounds of red delicious apples, and a pineapple for more experimentation! I cut the pineapple into 1/2 inch rounds, and then quartered each piece. I washed the apples, cut off the tops and bottoms, and then made 1/4 inch slices. Using an icing tip, I easily removed the core on each piece. The bananas were sliced into 1/2 inch pieces. The cherries were sliced in half and pitted. I used pineapple juice on the bananas and apples to prevent browning.

Update:

I dried for 16 hours at 130 degrees, plucking out pieces that were finished starting in the 8th hour. Cherries and most plump pineapple pieces took the longest amount of time. Yield: 4 cups of apples, 2 cups of pineapple, 1 cup of bananas, 1/2 cup of cherries. I should mention something about a literal 'sampling' error.

I tried a few banana slices and cherries in my morning cereal, and both were delightful! I can’t wait to have my pantry lined with jars of organic, harvested in-season fruits and veggies, ready to eat. Do you dehydrate? What did you start with, and what are your favourites now??

Christmas

We’ve been neglecting the blog over the last month, but we’ve been busy! The annual deadline of December 25th had us working frantically to finish up projects started over the past year. We’ll share that progress in our next post, but for now we’ll share some shots of Christmas in the row house.

Snipped some Alder branch and hung a single bulb.

Balsam fir clippings with wicker balls from The Flower Studio.

Made traditional orange pomanders with cloves for a perfect holiday scent.

White poinsettia, my favourite.

The first floor hallway, with lots of 'glass' bulbs, and balsam fir clippings.

Fir garland, plaid ribbon and lights winding up all three flights of stairs.

Our super huge Nova Scotian Christmas tree, which tripled in size after we opened the twine.

Close up of some ornaments.

The tree and mantel. On the mantel, I used a birch log felled during the hurricane in 2010, rescued from the spot around the bay.

I used the white birch on the mantel last year, and we liked it so much, it stayed! I dried oranges again this year, which serve as classic natural ornamentation.