Bunnies, Baubles, and Eggs! Easter Market in St Wendel

Be sure to scroll down for scintillating comments and more photos!

A fine old historic town!

New Beginnings

Beauty from simple things

The famous Easter Crown

Making Pottery the old fashioned way

Spring is almost here.  How do I know, without even a wayward glance at the calendar?  The St Wendel Easter Market, of course.

Which spurs questions by the truckload, the first being who was Saint Wendel?  That’s Sankt Wendel in German. Hard to tell for sure who he was or when he lived.  Not much is known, other than he seems to have been the son of a Scottish King.  Wendelin means wanderer or pilgrim in old German.  Wendel wandered around 600 A.D., give or take.  When he died, he was buried in the cell he had inhabited for years.  Not sure anybody knows where that is.  They’re still wandering….The town grew up nearby and when in 1320 a pestilence threatened the local livestock, it was said that St Wendel interceded to save them.

When you first enter the St Wendel market, the first thing you notice is a huge crown of pine bows, adorned with strings of eggs.  To be exact, there are some 2000 hand-painted eggs.

Stalls, selling everything from blankets to cheeses line every street.  And the day we were there, the streets were packed.

You find street performers, pens with rabbits of every description, a whole tent dedicated to intricately arranged bunny tableaus, and best of all, lots of glühwein, wurst, and beer.  Also, the best churros I’ve eaten outside of Spain.

On to the questions.  What do rabbits and eggs have to do with celebrating the day that Jesus Christ arose from the tomb?

In pre-Christian Germany (which wasn’t even Germany back then), people worshiped many gods and goddesses, including Eostra, the goddess of both spring and fertility. Her symbol was the rabbit because of the animal’s high reproduction rate.  Eggs also symbolize new life and new beginnings.  Somewhere in the 17^th Century, a story popped up featuring eggs and rabbits, or so I’m told.

As pre-Christian Germany converted to Roman Catholicism, many of the pagan traditions and celebrations were cleverly folded into the new religion.  After all, believing is one thing, but giving up holidays and feast days is quite another.  To complete the chain, when German immigrants came to America, they brought their traditions with them, presenting a glorious marketing opportunity for candy factories and greeting card makers.  Egg producers were quick to chime in, along with egg hiders and nest makers.  Heck, you already started with bunnies and eggs, so why not add a little more.

I really don’t give a damn, as long as I get my beer and wurst.  As I said, who wants to give up a feast day?

St Wendel is one heck of a small town, with restaurants and cafes galore.  If you don’t get to the Easter Market this year, mark-it (I love puns) on your list for next year.  Friendly crowds and a lovely celebration.

Have some tea!

Baumbrot - a Romanian tradition

Magazine Monday #76: Egg & Shrimp Sandwiches

My AeroGarden containing the herb mixture is doing great, I am happy to report, especially the dill. In fact, I have so much dill I'm not sure what to do with it all. I might start drying it for a rainy day. Tonight I am planning a dilly pasta for dinner, and now I am obsessed with finding recipes with dill... Dill bread? Dill biscuits? Dill cookies??? There is so much dill I don't know what to do!

So, in an effort to use a teeny bit of what I have on hand, I decided to make this sandwich today for my lunch. This is the Open Faced Shrimp & Egg Sandwich, made on a toasted bagel, from the June 2010 issue of Canadian Living Magazine. The recipe is here.

Very easy, very tasty. And it hit the spot. You can't beat fresh dill - unless you have too much of it and it beats you!

Easter Dinner's Dessert: Clafouti

Clafouti is a dessert that has intrigued me for a while, especially after I cut a recipe for it out of Thrifty Foods' (man, how I miss that store!) magazine God knows how long ago. I actually have two recipes for this baked custardy dessert, the other being in my copy of Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cook. I have avoided making clafouti because it requires a lot of eggs, and I have previously been stingy with my eggs since they are not cheap. But, times change, and so has my budget; I decided to make clafouti for Easter dinner's dessert.

Though my budget has changed, I wasn't willing to part with 6 egg yolks, which is what the recipe in Le Cordon Bleu calls for. Instead, I opted for the recipe from Thrifty's since it requires 6 whole eggs. I hate having a whole whack of egg whites, or yolks for that matter, kicking around, so I tend to avoid recipes that call for only parts of eggs rather than the whole egg.

The write-up in Le Cordon Bleu book did tell me, however, that clafouti is a dessert from the Limousin region of France, and that it is traditionally made with seasonal cherries, or plums or pears (how "traditional" this dessert is I don't know; it certainly didn't make our curriculum at the French-focused culinary school I attended). The Thrifty's recipe is for a pear version, utilizing canned pears. How pedestrian! I have so many berries in my freezer that I thought this would be an excellent time to use some. I made a Blueberry Clafouti!

The original recipe is here.

I made two substitutions: the first was obviously the berries; the second was a few drops of orange oil instead of the orange liqueur. I also used a whole vanilla bean, one of many that came in Jodi's wonderful Christmas parcel (also, this parcel is where the orange oil came from). I baked the dessert in a 9" deep dish pie pan.

The result: iffy!

I added the berries halfway through the baking because I didn't want them to all sink to the bottom. Unfortunately, the berries were still cold when I added them to the half-baked clafouti, and this ended up changing the temperature of the centre of the dessert drastically, necessitating a longer baking time. As a result, the sides of the clafouti were very overbaked, and the centre wasn't very custardy at all.

Kinda looks like a large Yorkshire Pudding with berries in it. I was not overly impressed with it, though there were no leftovers and everyone else thought it was fine.

I would try this again, only using the learning I gained with this experience: room temperature fruit added at the beginning of the baking. Oh well. We live and learn.

Work Weirdness

We had a whole bunch of twins show up in our shipment of eggs last week! Out of the 12 eggs I cracked for one recipe, I had seven sets of twins. Last Easter was the first time I'd seen twin yolks, and you can find more information about this oddity on a post I did here.

And here is something gross that arrived in an order a few months ago. It looks like the can had been punctured, but no one had noticed, it and it had gone moldy. Ew!

And...I start my new job tomorrow! Wish me luck!

Christmas Breakfast

So, as if were weren't full enough from the previous night's Christmas Eve feast! Because on Christmas morning, it's time to bring on the Benny!

Yep, we have Eggs Benny on Christmas morning, accompanied by bacon and sausage. Usually, Dad provides the bacon in the form of this double smoked stuff he got from a local butcher, but the butcher closed shop during this past year, so dad no longer had access to his favourite bacon! Well, we made do with regular bacon, and we also had traditional English sausages made by another local butcher (who doesn't smoke anything). The sauce is from a package. The eggs are poached by yours truly. We also had fried potatoes, mimosas, and special coffees with Kahlua!
And we had a great guest for breakfast on Christmas morning, too! His name is Crushy and he's my SIL's friend's dog! He was so great! He's half American Bull Dog, and 1/4 each Pit Bull and Blue Heeler. He was so happy and mushy and just great company!For other Christmas pet shots, go here!

Cooking With Kylie: Prawn Fried Rice

I really have been cooking up a storm with Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking!

I love rice, I love fried rice, I love shrimp, I love scrambled eggs, so how could I go wrong with this recipe? Well, I couldn't. It was excellent, and it was very simple - made even more simple due to the fact that I hate celery, so I didn't have to chop any of it up! This was really easy to put together in the time it took to cook some jasmine rice. I made half a recipe, and discovered that 3/4 cup of uncooked rice will give you approximately 2 cups of cooked rice, which was perfect.

Prawn Fried Rice* (from page 256 of Simple Chinese Cooking adapted by me)

about 1/2 lb shrimp (I used medium because this is what I usually have on hand), de-veined & roughly chopped
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 tbsp finely chopped ginger
2 cups steamed rice
1 tbsp saké
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 cup finely sliced green onion
salt to taste (I didn't need any)

* prawns are basically shrimp. Tomato/Tom-ah-toe.

1. Cook rice. Or, use leftover.

2. Heat 1 tbsp oil in wok, at high heat until oil shimmers. Add eggs & scramble until almost done. Remove to a plate.

3. Add 1 tbsp oil to the wok. Stir-fry shrimp & ginger about 1 minute, or until the shrimp are nearly cooked.

4. Add rice, saké, and oyster sauce, and eggs, and stir-fry for about 1 minute. Add green onions & stir-fry for another minute. Serve & enjoy!
I loved this meal - and it was a meal in and of itself! The flavours were subtle and delicious, and as I said, this was simple.

Camping Grub 2009 Part 1: Breakfast

Camping last week was excellent! The weather was perfect, except for the last night & the morning we packed up, when it rained. But other than that, it was hot and sunny, and the lake was still nice enough to swim in.

And of course we ate well! Let's start my 2009 Camping Grub series off with breakfast.

On Morning #1, we opted for a cooked, greasy camping breakfast of bacon & eggs, cooked over the camp stove. We also had toast made from a loaf of no-knead bread I made the day before we left. The camping toaster gadget was broken, so my SIL toasted the bread gently over the BBQ.There is something about cooking food on a camp stove out in the woods just makes everything taste way better!

On Morning #2, we had a super easy breakfast made by my SIL before we left: homemade peach crisp, made with local peaches. We had this with some vanilla yogurt and it was excellent!On Morning #3, it was raining, so we had breakfast in the trailer. I had made some granola at home and we had it with, again, vanilla yogurt. The recipe for the granola is here, but I used some coconut in it, and only used whole almonds as I was out of hazelnuts. Yum!
The full camping Flickr set, including all our food, some gorgeous scenery, and a gigantic bug, is here.

Kylie Kwong's Soy Sauce Eggs

Over the winter, I bought myself a copy of Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking with an Amazon gift certificate my good friend Jodi gave me. And I am just now getting around to trying out a recipe!

I might venture into one of those food blogging trends a la Julie & Julia, where I cook my way through a cookbook & blog about it. I think this Kwong cookbook is a good place to start. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, with my weird appetite issues, which persist, unfortunately, I for some reason remembered this recipe and it really appealed to me at the time. It looked simple enough and the flavour combination intrigued me. I made half a recipe to start out with in case I didn't like them.

The recipe is here.

Here is a look at my process, from the beginning. My hard boiled eggs went into the soy sauce mixture, after mixture camed to a boil.

The cartouche part didn't really work for me, and I didn't see the point of it. When I placed it on the eggs, it kept the steam in and would bubble to the top. It got annoying to keep letting the steam out so the cartouche wouldn't fly away on me, so I tried the lid of the pot. It boiled over. So, I simmered without any covering, just making sure to keep the eggs basted in the liquid. This worked fine.

This recipe takes a long time - an hour of braising. Here are the eggs half-way through.

And here they are at the end, by which time the soy sauce mixture had reduced to a thick syurp. BTW, I didn't use the fresh ginger, I used 2 tsp of ground.

They don't look terribly appetizing at this point...

And here they are plated...I couldn't resist the googly-eyed face...

These taste delicious, but the drawback is that it's a lot of work for not a lot of end product. The outer part of the egg was a little rubbery, but not off-puttingly so. I might make a larger batch for a special occasion.

I wonder what I'll do next?

Breakfast at the Full Circle Cafe

Last Monday, after catching the 9:00am ferry from Crawford Bay to Balfour, my dad treated me, Jem, & Shan to a slap-up breakfast at a breakfast hot spot in Nelson. When I say "hot spot" I mean hot spot. We had to wait about 20 minutes for a table just after 10:00 in the morning. The place was packed. Luckily, the restaurant is located in a little mall, and there was somewhere inside to sit because the weather was totally ugly.

The breakfast menu at Full Circle is quite varied, with a few different types of Eggs Benny, lots of eggy dishes, and lots of other stuff. It's all reasonably priced, too.

I had the Canadian Omelette, which had bacon, cheddar, and portabella mushrooms in it, topped with Hollandaise. Served with sourdough and pan fries, and I had a side of Hollandaise since the little bit on th top of the omelette was inadequate for my tastes!

Shan had a dish called Spuds & Cheddar: kinda like an omelette, but with potatoes in it. It was served with pan fries & toast, & she also had a side of Hollandaise.

Dad & Jem both had the Kick Hash: eggs, buffalo sausage, potatoes, banana peppers, mozzarella cheese, and topped with a chipotle Hollandaise. Served with rye toast & pan fries.

It was one amazing breakfast! A great way to end a great weekend of camping and food.

Dad and I have also had lunch at the Full Circle and it was really good. So, this is another great place to eat in the Kootenay dining mecca of Nelson, BC.

Camping Grub, Part 2

I am getting pretty adept at making Eggs Benny in a variety of situations, particularly camping situations. Sure, you might not always get poached eggs while cooking on a camp stove, but in that scenario fried or basted eggs are just as good.

Last weekend was a very luxurious camping environment, since my brother & SIL rented a motorhome that came equipped with a small gas stove AND a toaster oven AND a microwave. Yes, a TOASTER OVEN and a MICROWAVE! This made for some pretty gourmet camping grub cooked in a relatively fancy environment.

Poaching eggs and making the Hollandaise was no problem. Shan even made some hashbrowns with left over potates from the steak dinner the night before.

The result: restaurant-worthy Eggs Benny! Everyone was very happy and it was one wicked camping breakfast!
Nice plates, eh?

For Sunday dinner, my dad brought out a buffalo roast and stuck it in his slow cooker with some broth and seasonings. Yes, when you have a motor home at your disposal, you can do slap-up meals, let me tell you! Though there was a bit of an issue due to the awkward placement of electical outlets vis a vis the length of the slow cooker's cord, it was all sorted out & we had a great meal of beef dips with roasted potatoes and salad. I totally forgot to take pictures of it; sorry about that. But we did top it all off with the Black Forest Pie, which, as previously mentioned, was a huge hit.

That pretty much sums up the camping grub story from last week. One more meal to report on, and that was breakfast at a cafe in Nelson, but that a post for another time.

Who Knew?

In celebration of Easter, here's a timely little ditty about eggs.

At work last Monday, I came by this as I was making muffins:

Now, I've cracked a lot of eggs in my life - a lot of eggs - but I've never come across a double yolk before. It got me wondering how unique they are, and I came up with this bit of information to wow you all with.

1. Double yolks are a "mistake" in the chicken's reproductive system that sometimes happens when a hen just starts laying eggs and her system is still trying to figure out how to do it correctly. It may also be hereditary. [source]

2. Double Yolkers appear when ovulation occurs too rapidly, or when one yolk somehow gets "lost" and is joined by the next yolk. Double yolkers may be by a pullet whose productive cycle is not yet well synchronized. They're occasionally laid by a heavy-breed hen, often as an inherited trait. [source]

3. Most double yolk eggs are produced by young birds, so therefore barns that contain young flocks have a large concentration of these eggs. Usually a young bird will lay a small egg, but if the egg is a double yolk, it tends to be either large or extra large size. This tends to be true in humans as well, where expectant mothers tend to become “larger” for multiple birth pregnancies. [source]

4. Usually a double-yolked egg will be longer and thinner than an ordinary single-yolk egg. Double-yolked eggs occur rarely, only leading to observed successful hatchings under human intervention, as the unborn chickens would otherwise fight each other and die. [source]

Eggs in Purgatory

Who could resist a dish with that title?

Last week, I treated myself to the latest issue of the Food Network Magazine. I'd never seen it before on my local magazine shelves, and I was intrigued. Overall, it was OK but not something I'd go out of my way to purchase again. It did have an interesting section called "50 Things to Make With a Jar of Pasta Sauce" and this dish with the cool title caught my eye - purely because of the title. So, I made it for dinner the other night.

And it was good! It was strange, but it worked!

Eggs in Purgatory

1 cup pasta sauce
2 eggs

Really, this is ridiculously easy: simmer the sauce in a frying pan until bubbly, then add eggs and cook to desired doneness. (I like a runny yolk.) Sprinkle with a bit of cheese. I covered the eggs with a lid to keep the heat it because this actually took longer to cook than I was expecting. I served it over penne, but you don't have to; you can have it on its own or with some crusty bread, or whatever.

Bon appetit!