• Attention, all you explorers! We have just received a new book for those who plan to explore BC this summer. Kootenay the Rockies B.C.Backroad Mapbook has just arrived.

This complements the other Backroad Mapbooks that will help you explore past the main roads in B.C. and Alberta.

Nile Cruise Day 3 - May 8

Breakfast and then on shore to tour the ancient quarry and the temple at Gebel Silsila. Very interesting learning how the huge blocks were cut out with stone and copper/bronze tools and shipped hundreds of miles to Giza, Luxor and other places…The tombs of the architects and workers had been damaged by the flooding Nile and later by Coptic Christians fleeing persecution…

The sails came up as we left and we had a wonderful lazy afternoon of sailing along the Nile, being passed by the big cruise ships (in both directions). We found a sandbank later on for a swim in the surprisingly cold river (no crocodiles south of the Aswan Dam!). Very pleasant. A couple of locals wanted to take a photo of us with them! Sailing slowly northwards we reached Kom Ombo, with its important crocodile temple. There’s even a brand new Crocodile Museum, but it’s closed waiting its official opening by the (former and now under charges of extortion) Minister of Antiquities! Apparently thousands of crocs used to laze about on the nearby island and the temple was to keep the locals safe (or appease the gods?).

We stopped for dinner on a sandy island and a BBQ was set up, our heavy tables and chairs carried down and we ate on the sands, surrounded by surprisingly docile white dogs, the moon and stars overhead (until a bright light was attached to the mast). After dinner the crew entertained us with some raucous Egyptian folk music and dancing – and of course we all joined in the dancing!

Nile Cruise Day 4 – May 9

A day of pure laziness and sailing north to end at Aswan. After dinner we’ll go and explore the souq (“the best outside Cairo”). A little sunbathing, a lot of nothing much! Time to catch up on the log and for Anna and Colin’s stinking colds to (hopefully!) run their course. Just passed under a new bridge outside Aswan and watched some boys “watering”, or tormenting!, a couple of donkeys. So many scenes really haven’t changed in thousands of years…

Well, the souq was nice, but hardly worthy of its reputation – just a long street of booths selling mostly spices and herbs. Nice enough but lacking the variety of other souqs we’ve seen around the Islamic world. Glad we didn’t wait to buy my coffee pot or Anna’s hammer!

Back to the boat and the party that threatened to go on all night (either a wedding or a graduation) actually ended around 11 pm.

Gerry

More about Egyptian antiquities!

Tomatoes before oven treatment:

After oven treatment:

I never thought I would admit this, but the words "shriveled" and "shrunken" appeal to me. In a tomato kind of way. When a sweet, ripe, meaty tomato takes some serious heat in an oven and comes away greatly reduced. With its essence concentrated in the shrunken flesh, and all the moisture evaporated, the whithered tomato becomes even more of itself. It's an oxymoron.

Decent tomatoes are starting to appear in markets and grocery stores and I am ready with my arsenal of tools: a roasting pan, fresh garlic, olive oil and thyme from the garden. I start with a fragrant Roma tomato and cut it into eighths. It then gets a bath in a glug of good, fruity olive oil, as well as a toss with chopped garlic, sprigs of thyme and salt and pepper to taste. It's already tasting good. Tomatoes like a hot oven, so don't be shy to crank yours to 425 F. Watch those babies darken and shrink. Give them a toss every 15 minutes or so to let the caramelization occur evenly and to prevent sticking. I say 45 minutes or so in the oven should render your tomatoes tender and soft, ready for the next stage in their lives.

Those of you who are fussy about tomato skins have a couple of options. You could peel the tomatoes before roasting by quickly immersing them in boiling water and then removing the skin. I do this though: I let them roast and cool and then quickly and easily pick off the pieces of shrivelled skin with my fingers.

You are now the proud owner of a pan of intensely aromatic roasted tomatoes. You may, of course, devour them on the spot. Standing at the oven. But do keep some for a magnificent pasta sauce. You can gently press them with a potato masher to futher soften the flesh and pair them with your favourite robust pasta, perhaps penne or fusili. Throw in some grated parmesan cheese, loosen with a bit of the pasta cooking water and call it dinner. I used roasted tomatoes as part of a melange of fillings for calzone last night, adding body and flavour to the mozzarella cheese, sauteed mushrooms, olives and roasted peppers they were accompanying. Grilled chicken breasts enjoy being slathered with a scattering of roasted tomatoes overtop as does a halibut steak. Omelettes filled with your withered wonders and little cubes of fresh mozzarella are a fine idea too. In a quiche, on a pizza, beside some garlicy shrimp, strewn over grilled sausages . . . . . . you get the idea.

The next time you see a nice looking tomato, treat it to some time in the oven.

More inspiration for putting tomatoes to good use:

Now that we can be reasonably hopeful of weather seasonal enough to allow things to grow, I have begun to obsess about my garden and all those green leaves I will throw into salads directly out of my back yard. Having a garden is a commitment, but it is also a great pleasure, and there is nothing more rewarding than eating food grown ten steps away from your own kitchen. Not every garden need be a waiting game for harvest either, my personal strategy is to plant a multitude of greens and herbs, which provided me with a continuous yield of goodies for the entire growing season.

If you have the space, and really want a garden, but are feeling a little daunted by the task, you might be interested in the Calgary duo known as Leaf & Lyre. These charming farm boys will use your prime garden space for SPIN (Small Plot INtensive) Gardening. In exchange for your land, and a beautiful yard full of food, Leaf & Lyre’s charge is 50% of the veggies they produce; that sounds like a good deal to me. Want more info? Check out this profile on the duo in FFWD.

If you are craving the daily dirt and delight of your own backyard plot, the Calgary Garden Coach is a nice little site that will help you get off on the right track. One of the staples of any garden is the compost pile, to figure out how to make one work head over to Composting Council of Canada for some tips and tutorials.

The beautiful thing about gardens is that they are lovely little ecosystems; with the proper use of composting, companion planting, and water management you can create a really amazing little world of your own, that goes far beyond the cosmetics of landscaping, and actually has the potential to improve the environment around you. If that sounds like your kind of heaven, Big Sky Permaculture offers a great array of courses on the subject, and while you are at it, why not give back to your local ecosystem, providing a home for some friendly pollinators through A.B.C. Apiaries and Bees for Communities.

If you dream of a garden but don’t have any space where you live, the Government of Alberta enthusiastically promotes involvement in Community Gardens, check out the Calgary Horticultural Society’s Community Gardens Resource Network.

When harvest time comes and you are wildly over-productive, or simply have a fruit tree you cannot keep up with, the Urban Harvest Project will lend a helping-hand picking, and putting your unused produce to good use.

If gardening is not your thing, but eating sustainably is, head over to Slow Food Calgary’s Local Food Directory, or the Alberta Farm Fresh Producers Association. If you would like to dine out, you might be interested in a new business initiative called L.E.A.F. (Leaders in Environmentally Accountable Foodservice). The Calgary-based business has developed a certification for sustainability in the food service industry, taking into account such things as waste and water management and support of local farmers and producers.

Happy growing and eating!

By Jennifer C.

I baked up a batch of these beauties recently for a folk dance workshop and their success was measured in moans and swoons. Just the right quota of deep bittersweet morsels and the crunch of toasted walnuts encased in a fragrant, buttery, chewy cookie dough. All of these elements enhanced each other in an intoxicating interplay of flavour and texture, a virtual marriage of disparate parts that synthesized into a unified whole.

I realized, after a thoughtful chew, that the recipe for success in this cookie is essentially balance. You will find a dough sweet enough to titilate but that does not overwhelm the chocolate. There is a certain, special chewiness that feels just right, a small snap with every bite that melds into tenderness. The chocolate must stand up on its own two feet, delicious enough to win praise as it nestles into the crevices of your mouth. You expect a sweet sensation of nuttiness, little nuggets that play off of the silky smoothness of the chocolate. Here, the size of the nuts, their freshness and amount, come into play. Too many is the wrong emphasis. Too few is just wrong.

I subscribe to the school of thought that ordains that a chunk of chocolate is better than a chip. And chunking your own bar of chocolate yields all kinds of extra bonuses - lovely little pieces of course, but also slivers, shavings, dust, all useful in the cookie you are about to build. It all goes in, the dust speckling the dough, the slivers adding small dashes of flavour, and, the part you live for, the chunks, the explosion of chocolate indulgence that elevates this cookie to a realm unattainable by its cousin, the chocolate chip cookie.

From where does this cookie come to me? The one and only David Lebovitz, chocolate guru, ice cream maven, food blogger, essentially the perfect man:

David Lebovitz's Perfectly Balanced Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2+1/2 cups all-purpose flour; 3/4 tsp. baking soda; 1/8 tsp. salt; 1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature; 1 cup light brown sugar; 3/4 cup granulated sugar; 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract; 2 large eggs at room temperature; 2 cups walnuts, coarsely chopped; 14 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped - use the best quality you can get your hands on.

In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking soda and salt. In a stand mixer beat together butter, the two sugars and vanilla and beat on medium speed until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time until thoroughly blended. Stir in the flour mixture, nuts and chocolate chunks and mix just until the flour disappears. Chill the dough overnight in the fridge. Preheat oven to 350 F. Form teaspoon sized balls of dough and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet, 2 inches apart. Press down gently on each ball with the palm of your hand to flatten slightly. Bake about 10 minutes or until the cookies are set, very lightly browned in the centres and are still soft.

Learn more about great cookies: