Old Age and Black Eyed Peas

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There was a time, not so very long ago, when ‘making plans for the weekend’ consisted of looking for a great new band playing in my favorite grubby bar, or finding a house party. These days, my weekend plans seem to consist of:

*  laundry

*  more laundry

*  drying and folding laundry

*   catching up on Grey’s Anatomy

*  trying to decide if I like “Ex List“, or if it is, in fact, the most unbearably twee show on television

And so we are pulled, slowly but inexorably, into our twilight years.

This weekend, extra! added! bonus! excitement! arrived in the opportunity to move a couch. Sean’s dad needs one, and we just happen to have an almost brand new, only slightly dog and cat hair encrusted sofa sitting under a drop cloth in our garage. Sean is off to borrow a truck to move it with, and I’m planning our weekend menu until he returns.

Have I mentioned before that we live in the middle of no where? I’m not kidding when I say this, and never is it more apparent than when I get a craving for ethnic food. In my part of the country, fish and chips is about as ‘ethnic’ as it gets, and mushy peas are regarded as dangerously exotic. For sushi, or Indian, or a good bowl of pho, I need to drive an hour, at least. I admit I’ve gotten into a bad rut of basic meat n’ veg cooking since we moved here, a fact I can blame on a shocking lack of available ingredients, but since moving the couch means a drive into Kitchener (yes, the bustling metropolis of Kitchener, home to the world’s second largest Oktoberfest), I have the chance to hit an ethnic grocer and stock up on spices and ingredients (like dried prawns, and frozen edamame).

With available ingredients not an option for being a slacking shirker (note to self: good future puppy name), I’ve decided to do Senegalese food tomorrow night, which really isn’t half as exciting as it sounds, since it’s basically a rice/fish/veg based cuisine.

I’m going to prepare fried plantains, black eyed pea fritters and Ceebu Jën. I’ve made this loads of time, and it really is dead simple (not to mention tasty). By the way, if you’re not a fish fan, you can make this dish with lamb or beef, in which case it’s known as ‘Ceebu Yapp’.

I use the recipes from Congo Cookbook:

Ceebu Jën

What you need

  • stuffing mixture (roof or roff):
    • one or two sweet peppers (or bell peppers) (green, yellow, or red); chopped
    • one onion or two leeks or several scallions, chopped
    • garlic, minced (optional)
    • a small bunch of parsley or a bay leaf (or some similar fresh herb)
    • salt
    • hot chile pepper, cleaned and chopped (optional)
  • one cup peanut oil, or for an authentic red color: red palm oil
  • two onions, chopped
  • a piece of dried, salted, or smoked fish, such as cod or herring, (stockfish is often used); the piece should be about half the size of your hand
  • two to three pounds of fish: whole, filets, or steaks; cleaned (sea bass, hake, haddock, sea bream, halibut, or any similar firm-fleshed fish). Note: I am a coward, and I remove the heads from whole fish, as I don’t like to eat food that’s looking at me.
  • tomato paste
  • three or four tomatoes (peeled if desired), whole
  • one or more of the following root vegetables and tubers:
    • carrots, chopped
    • sweet cassava (also called manioc, yuca, or yucca) tuber; or potatoes, chopped
    • yams (sweet potatoes are not the same, but may be substituted), chopped
  • hot chile pepper, such as habanero or serrano chile, whole, but pricked with a fork
  • one or more of the following leaf and fruit vegetables:
    • cabbage, chopped
    • one or two sweet peppers (or bell peppers) (green, yellow, or red); left whole
    • one squash (any kind will do) or zucchini, cleaned and chopped
    • eggplant (aubergine, or guinea squash), peeled and chopped
    • okra, whole, but with ends removed
  • several cups of rice

What you do

  • Prepare the roof (or roff) by combining the stuffing mixture ingredients and grinding them into a paste, adding a little oil or water if needed. Many cooks include what seems to be an essential in Africa: a Maggi cube. Cut deep slits into the fish (but not all the way through) and stuff them with the roof mixture.
  • Heat the oil in a large pot. Fry the onions and dried/salted/smoked fish for a few minutes. Then fry the fresh fish for a few minutes on each side. Remove the fish and set aside.
  • Stir the tomato paste and a cup of water into the oil in the pot. Add the root vegetables and tubers and the hot chile pepper. Add water to partially cover them. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or more.
  • Add the leaf and fruit vegetables, place the fried fish on top of them, and continue to simmer for an additional twenty minutes or until the vegetables are tender.
  • The fish and all the vegetables and set them aside, keeping them warm. Remove a cup or two of the vegetable broth and set it aside. Add the rice to the vegetable broth. Add water or remove liquid as necessary to obtain two parts liquid to one part rice. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer on very low heat until the rice is cooked–about twenty minutes. It should stick a little to the bottom of the pot.
  • Find the hot chile among the vegetables. Combine it to the reserved vegetable broth in a small saucepan and bring to a slow boil. Remove and discard the pepper and put the sauce into a dish or gravy boat.
  • When the rice is done turn the pot over onto a large serving platter. Scrape the crust (the xooñ) from the bottom of the pot over the rice. Arrange the fish and vegetables over and around the rice. Garnish with parsley and sliced limes (to squeeze over fish) as desired.

Akara (Black Eyed Pea Fritters)

What you need

  • two to three cups dried cowpeas (black-eyed peas) or similar
  • one onion, finely chopped
  • one-half teaspoon salt
  • half cup dried shrimp or prawns
  • hot chile pepper, and/or sweet green pepper or sweet red pepper, finely chopped (to taste)
  • cayenne pepper or red pepper (to taste)
  • one-half teaspoon fresh ginger root, peeled and minced (or a few pinches of powdered ginger) (optional)
  • peanut oil, palm oil, or vegetable oil for frying

What you do

  • Clean the black-eyed peas in running water. Soak them in water for at least a few hours or overnight. After soaking them, rub them together between your hands to remove the skins. Rinse to wash away the skins and any other debris. Drain them in a colander.
  • Crush, grind, or mash the black-eyed peas into a thick paste. Add enough water to form a smooth, thick paste of a batter that will cling to a spoon. Add all other ingredients (except oil). Some people allow the batter to stand for a few hours (overnight in the refrigerator); doing so improves the flavor.
  • Heat oil in a deep skillet. Beat the batter with a wire whisk or wooden spoon for a few minutes. Make fritters by scooping up a spoon full of batter and using another spoon to quickly push it into the hot oil. Deep fry the fritters until they are golden brown. Turn them frequently while frying. (If the fritters fall apart in the oil, stir in a beaten egg, some cornmeal or crushed breadcrumbs.)
  • Serve with an African Hot Sauce or salt, as a snack, an appetizer, or a side dish.

Crazy Puppy Dinner Time

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Feeding time is fairly hectic with six puppies to wrangle at once. We have it broken down into a fairly regimented routine — clean pen of the nine million pounds of accumulated poop, change pads, put down pans of food, clean up more poop immediately after the finish eating, watch as they burn off crazy dog energy.

The pups eat Honest Kitchen ‘Embark’ in the morning and the evening, split into two shallow foil pans. It’s a given that, however many pans I put down, they’ll all try to eat out of the same pan at the same time, on the theory that whatever the other guy has got must be the best. At lunch, the pups eat soaked kibble, and they usually get a small handful of dry kibble before bed as a snack.

Butters and Jellie are thorough eaters. Both of them finish off the leftovers by standing right in the middle of the pan of food, and licking all around the edges. This inevitably results in little green dog food foot prints on the other puppies. For some reason, Pixie gets most of them.

Immediately after eating the pups usually have about twenty minutes of ‘crazy dog time’. That’s where they all run around the pen at full speed, smacking into each other and having periodic wrestling matches. In mid play, they’ll usually stop for a poop. We’ve learned not to put puppies out into the play pen until well after we’re sure everyone is (literally) all pooped out.

Crazy time is followed by sleepy puppy time, aka “quick, take a picture while they’re sleeping time”. Lately, it’s the only chance I get to take a photo of Heart, as her usual reaction now on seeing the camera is to lunge for it and bite at the lens.

Rumble, on the other hand, has decided he’d like to become a male model when he grows up, and greets the camera with an instantaneous, rock solid pose, complete with soulful expression. Pixie’s reaction to the camera seems to be “Jeez lady, get a new hobby”.

The rest of the photos are below, or over on Flickr.

Thanksgiving in Grey Bruce

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We ate pie, we played with puppies, and we watched buggies filled with giggling, cheerful, colorfully dressed Mennonite girls pass by the end of my driveway.

Later, we drove north to Leith, and watched sailboats on the sound, on their way out to Georgian Bay.

Delilah discovered the joys of paddling out into ankle deep water and drinking her fill, and the satisfaction of rolling in wet sand just before you get put back into the car.

All in all, it was a wonderful fall weekend.

Food for Friends and Monkey Faces

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Hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving – at least everyone here in Canada.

I’ll be cooking a full on Thanksgiving dinner, like I do every year. I admit it, I go a bit overboard when it comes to feeding friends and family. I suffer from famine cooking syndrome, the fear that if I don’t cook ten times too much food, someone MIGHT. STARVE!!

This year, it’s a locally smoked ham, which Sean is refusing to let me honey glaze, since he thinks glaze is the devil’s way of messing up good meat. Instead, I’ll do a dry mustard rub, and sneak some demerara sugar onto one side of it. For sides – sweet potato casserole, garlic mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts with chestnuts, dinner rolls and turnip. For dessert, pumpkin pie of course, with a chocolate truffle cake on the side for those idjits (cough:sean:cough) who can’t see the intrinsic beauty that is pumpkin pie. It’s a vegetable. It’s a dessert. It’s BOTH!

A few puppy faces to keep you company are over on Flickr... and my favorites are below.

Peek a Boo Pixie

Peek a Boo Pixie

Snuggle Butters

Snuggle Butters

Emo Rumble Does Album Art

Emo Rumble Does Album Art

Crazy Dog Days

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How’s the weather where you are? Here in the Bruce Peninsula, we’re in the middle of a rare warm spell, something we had too little of this summer. It’s perfect dog and people weather – warm, sunny days, cool nights.

The dogs seem to love it when it’s like this outside. It brings out the puppy in them, and they spend a lot of time wrestling and playing, and engaging in a favorite Frenchie activity, mouth wars.

Tessa might be almost fourteen, but she’s still the mouth war queen of our house. Delilah, her one year old granddaughter, is a worthy opponent, but no match for the grand dame of big mouth Frenchie wrestling.

Here’s Tessa and Delilah engaging in their second favorite activity, the ‘make a stupid face and see if it sticks’ competition.

Dexter spends warm days the same way he spends every other day — obsessing over his soccer ball. It’s probably the best investment I’ve ever made in a dog toy, and I paid $1 for it at the local discount store. Dexter cherishes his soccer ball. He loves his soccer ball. Other toys might get lost, but not his battered, dirty, squeaky soccer ball.

Today he faced a dilemma — what is more important? The chance to eat a worm, or the overwhelming need to keep his soccer ball in his mouth? Decisions, decisions.

Looks like the worm won. And yes, he ate it.

It’s a good thing the weather has been this warm, because it gives me a chance to dry some laundry outside. At this age, the puppies exist for one reason, and one reason only – to produce copious, never ending volumes of poop, which they almost instantly manage to either:

a) step in
or
b) roll in

Whichever choice they pick, it ends up all over the washable pads we use to line the bottom of their ex pen (and all over each other, of course, which is why they are all getting semi daily baths).

Here’s today’s laundry, drying on the line — yes, I said today’s, as in one single day’s laundry just for the dogs. My friend Lisa reminded me that this phase is the phase that lets us, as dog breeders, contemplate the idea of the little darlings leaving home without breaking into tears. At the moment, I break into tears at the thought of doing any more laundry.