Tag Archives: Family

Traditions and a Brown Butter Apple Tart

5 Replies

two tarts 2 625 sqTraditions. All families have them. Those little rituals passed down from generation to generation that help shape your family by creating a sense of interconnectedness, you know, that warm fuzzy feeling that makes you appreciate being a part of this clan. Traditions can help create memories that fill your mind with laughter, love and joy. Hopefully your family has multiple positive traditions and not too many of the negative ones, that sadly get passed from generation to generation, like the ancient family recipe for guilt and passive-aggressive bullying!

Almost every summer my siblings, their spouses and kids and my mom descend upon us at the cottage for the Labour Day weekend. About eight years ago my youngest sister and brother and I were swimming in the lake and the next thing we knew, we had swum from our cottage to a little island in the middle of our lake, and back again, about a 2 kilometer swim. No one can really remember how the decision to swim this little marathon came about, but we have repeated the swim every summer since then. Lest you think we are elite athletes or something like that, let me assure you we swim the entire way with head-up breaststroke. None of us likes putting our heads in the water. So we talk and laugh, and cough the entire way there and back. My husband insists I wear a waist belt that has a little swimmers safety flag attached to it so that boats can see me and not run me over. He loves me dearly, I guess!the swimmersOver the years, various other family members have joined us and in 2009, my then 9 year old niece did the swim for her very first time! She is part mermaid. Last year my brother’s new wife joined us for the first time and we almost had to boot her out of the club when she started doing a proper crawl stroke and actually got her head wet. This summer she is 7 months pregnant, so we excused her. My brother made up some baseball hamstring injury excuse so he did not join us either. My 14 year old nephew completed the swim for the first time this summer and we were all very thrilled about that.

I have one brother-in-law that is known for his competitive nature. The first year he joined us for the swim, he was upset that my sister and I were swimming faster than he was. He claimed that it was his swim trunks that were slowing him down. Apparently they were not very aerodynamic as they kept filling up with water. Being the keen competitor he is, he removed the swim trunks, and swam commando. We made him promise to never do that again! Every third year, my cousin Lewis joins us, and he has come to treasure this new tradition, as well as the Double Coconut Granola and yogurt breakfast that awaits him when he is done. In addition to my little safety flag, we always have a canoe alongside us just in case someone gets too tired. This year my brother-in-law Guy got coerced into the role of spotter.

Regular readers of this blog may already know that my drink of choice in the summer is a cold glass of Prosecco. While I have no problem drinking alone, (I find my own company very amusing!), cracking open a bottle and sharing it with my sisters is even more enjoyable and has become a tradition that we have all come to love. However, this past weekend we only drank one bottle of Prosecco. We discovered a new wine that we all fell in love with. My siblings and mom brought me a case of assorted wines as a little thank you gift.bottle and glassWe all became smitten with a California wine by Ironstone called “Obsession.”. Made from the Symphony grape (a hybrid of the muscat and grenache gris grape), this wine was luscious. My brother-in-law chilled it in the freezer an hour before we served it. It has floral and citrus notes, with peach and pear overtones. It is clean and balanced with a crisp and slightly acidic finish, which saves the wine from being too cloyingly sweet. It is the perfect aperitif wine. A new tradition has been born!

I decided to test a new Rosh Hashanah recipe over the weekend since I had my niece Kailey here with me. Although she is only 12, she is an extremely gifted baker. She did all the baking and I shot the pictures. We made a brown butter apple tart, a take on the traditional Rosh Hashanah Apple Cake. Browned butter is one of those magical culinary techniques that makes everything taste  and smell better.

kneadingrolling dough

lining tart panlining pie shellThe custard filling is enhanced with vanilla bean and brown butter. It doesn’t get much better than that.  Topped with thinly sliced apple rings, this tart is sure to become a new Rosh Hashanah or fall tradition at your house.apples 2

placing applesbrown butter fillingNot only did my niece bake the tarts, she also helped wash the dishes!washing dishesicing sugar

Click here to print recipe for Brown Butter Apple Tart.

a slice

 

The Name Game

6 Replies

My husband and his five siblings are in a family business together. We decided about 8 years ago that we should begin to educate our children, the next generation, so we founded a family council. We get together twice a year with the goals of fun, family togetherness and enlightenment in mind.  Our most recent council meeting took place in Fort Lauderdale several weeks ago. There are about 24 of us who participate in these meetings.

It doesn’t seem to matter how old you are, we all revert back to some fairly petty childhood behaviours when we get together with our siblings. Even though we are all adults now, somehow we regress backwards to our 10-year-old selves, squabbling, poking and just plain irritating the heck out of each other. In order to have a more productive meeting this time around, one of the professionals we are working with suggested a seating plan for the meeting room. As co-chair of our family council, I was a little worried about how this would be received. Some members have control issues and would likely not take too kindly to being told where to sit.

And then I had the brilliant idea of creating cookie place cards. I figured everyone would be so busy admiring them and munching on them that no one would even notice that they were being directed as to where to sit.

I needed a sturdy cookie dough that would survive the flight from Ottawa to Toronto. I decided on making two kinds of dough, Gingerbread  and  Brown Sugar Cookie  dough. I pulled out my alphabet cookie cutters. I can’t remember where I got these, but I do know that up until now, they had only been used with play-doh. I gave them a good scrubbing and got down to work.

It’s best to roll out the dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper while it is still soft and then chill until firm.

A table knife can be used to gently nudge the letters out of the cutter. Give them a bit of room on the cookie sheet as they do swell a bit with baking.

I decided to use royal icing to decorate the letters with. If you are new to decorating cookies, check out Sweetopia’s blog. She is really amazing and she has many videos that really show how to do it well. I used her Royal Icing Recipe for my cookies and it is one of the best I have tried. To colour the royal icing, I bought gel food colours from Americolor. The little squeeze bottles are great.

Here is a little video I made to demonstrate decorating the letters. I clearly need some videography courses!

Once I had all the letters, I needed to decide how to turn them into name cards. I decided to make cookie boards to “glue” the letter onto, using royal icing as the glue.

The icing needs to dry for at least 24 hours, before packaging it up.

I am happy to report that the cookie place cards were a big hit and family harmony was achieved. I think all would agree that the highlight of the weekend, planned by the “Fun Committee” (yes, we actually have a fun committee!) was dinner at a Mexican restaurant followed by bowling. It’s possible that margaritas and tequila shots may have been consumed!

Related articles

The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts and Charred Corn Slaw

3 Replies

A few weeks ago we hosted our Triennial (my new word for the day – that’s once every three years) family reunion at our cottage, We started doing this in 2000. This summer we totalled 38 various aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and several other various hangers oners. I wrote about the genesis of these reunions a few years ago, here. My youngest sister (I have 4 sisters and one lucky brother!) likes to plan activities for these reunions. She is a kindergarten teacher. My other sisters, brother, and I tolerate it to humour her, plus, she is so bossy, we all end up doing what she says anyways, just to keep the peace.

On the second morning of the reunion we all played “The Amazing Race-Wedding Edition“, in honour of our brother’s upcoming nuptials in two weeks. Under the guise of helping the betrothed couple prepare for the wedding we were  divided into teams and went off on a car rally-treasure hunt to the lovely town of Perth, Ontario.

We did a similar type of activity at the last reunion, in 2009, and my oldest son asked me if participation in this year’s hunt was optional. I patiently explained to him that no, participation was not optional and that the reason for this was so that when his parents, and/or aunts and uncles are dead and he and all his cousins are sitting around at the Shiva house, they will have shared memories to reminisce and laugh about. Making memories for your kids is one of the most important tasks for a parent.

The “Race” was fast and furious. Several members of our family are quite competitive and play hard to win. In fact, I would suggest that if you ever visit Perth, and stop in at the delicious Sunflower Bake Shop (where we had to visit to obtain a list of cupcake flavours that they make and then recommend the one that should be served at the wedding), you might not want to mention our family’s name. Apparently we are now blacklisted from that establishment. But don’t let that stop you. Their lemon pound cake is killer!

On our journey we were instructed to stop in at Jersey Joe’s Pizza and Sub. Our task was to create a perfect pizza for the happy couple to eat at 2:00 am after their wedding. We were to get a price for the pie and take a picture with Jersey Joe. Bonus points were promised if we brought a box back to the cottage. Jersey Joe was a real sweetheart and he makes a mean pizza pie!

The last task of the race ended proved to be the most controversial. We wound up at the Perth Dairy Queen where we had to create a custom Blizzard that the happy couple would taste and judge.

Most of the teams assumed that the custom blizzard had to contain ingredients that were available at the DQ. However, one team, who declared themselves to be “outside the box thinkers” interpreted this task much more loosely. Knowing my brother’s penchant for bacon, Butterfingers candy bars and Hostess Twinkies, they procured these items before arriving at the DQ and mixed them into their custom blizzard.

Fortunately for all the other teams, the “outside the box thinker’s” blizzard was the sixth of seven blizzards that the happy (but by now, quite nauseous) couple had to taste. My brother turned a pale shade of green as his sweetheart shoved a mouthful of blizzard coated bacon bits into his mouth. One sister was heard to quip, “Cheaters never prosper.”

That afternoon, more than a few family members signed up for naptime!

Not all the weekend’s activities were compulsory. On Friday morning we held a swim marathon. Attendance at this event was totally optional and there were only 6 of us who participated in the 2 kilometer swim to an island in the middle of our lake.  My youngest sister, brother and I first did the swim about 6 years ago and it has become a time-honoured tradition ever since. We discovered that the owner of the cottage on the island we swim to is a heart surgeon. That always gives us comfort as we gasp our way across the lake.My brother-in-law Brandon had a big bowl of Double Coconut Granola for breakfast and claimed it was the perfect fuel to jet him across the lake. My cousin Lewis tried some when we got back and now is a member of our Breakfast Club!

The Jell-O eating contest drew a huge crowd, as we cheered on my brother, the undefeated champion. He took gold in 2003 (Watermelon), 2006 (Chocolate Pudding) and 2009 (Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce). In our food races, we prize speed over quantity. Whoever finishes their plate first wins. We organize it in heats of 3 and then the winners of each heat go against each other until a final winner emerges.

In the finals it was the uncontested champ (my brother) against his beloved (my future sister-in-law). She slurped faster than he did and is now our family’s new hero. Secretly, just between you and me, I think he threw the race to let her win, because that’s just the kind of sweet guy my brother is!

Shockingly, there was close to perfect attendance for Friday night’s blind Prosecco tasting. We kept score on the chalkboard covered fridge and Villa Sandi eked out a close one against second place Mionetto and third place Blu Giovello. Santa Margherita Valdobbiadene got one lonely vote (Mine!)

For our Friday night dinner, we set up tables on the lawn and covered them with white cloths, and candles. It looked so beautiful, we could have held the wedding right then and there!

As the sun was setting a feeling of peace and dare I say, serenity, came over me. As I looked around at this incredible gathering the phrase “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts“came to mind. So true when applied to family! I hope that my children and their cousins will continue this wonderful tradition we have started.

Last week, as I was making this slaw for the fourth time in less than 3 weeks, it occurred to me that this phrase, (The whole is greater than the sum of its parts) is equally applicable to coleslaw! Somehow when combined, lowly cabbage, pedestrian carrots, celery and green onion and ordinary farm stand corn come together in a kind of wondrous culinary synergy to create a really kick ass slaw.

Rather than grilling the corn, which I find makes the kernels tough and a bit leathery to chew, I prefer to gently saute them in a pan. As they brown and begin to snap, crackle and pop out of the pan, they become even sweeter due to caramelization.

For the dressing I wanted to blend a perfect balance of sweet (honey), salty (kosher salt), hot (chipotle in adobo) and sour (lime juice). I smoothed the whole thing out with a dollop of light mayo. For the final touch I coarsely chopped a huge handful of cilantro, but if you are a member of the cilantro haters club, feel free to leave it out!

Click here to print the recipe for Charred Corn Slaw.