On my to-cook list

• arepas
• paella
• fried rice
• pasta with tomatoes, white beans, fresh oregano and rosemary
• massaman Thai curry (using leftover roast chicken)
• merguez and couscous and tomato/cuke/onion salad
• tabbouleh with chickpeas
• black bean burgers

Cinnamon buns

I made cinnamon buns, after many times of thinking "I should make cinnamon buns" and then not doing it.

I tried to follow this recipe but ended up making several modifications due to not having stuff. I omitted the pecan sauce in the bottom of the pan because I had no suitable nuts and wasn't really feeling the sticky buns anyway, and I was nearly out of butter, so I subbed canola oil in the dough (I did have enough butter to brush on the buns before adding the filling) I was also out of eggs, so I left out the yolks too, and added about a TB more oil to the dough. I also used lemon zest instead of orange. Finally, I upped the amount of filling by about a third more, since I wasn't putting in the caramel sauce, and doubled the cinnamon on top of that for extra deliciousness.

I'm amazed that even with all of my messing with the recipe, they turned out fantastic! The dough is super soft and fragrant (I don't make sweet dough much, maybe I should) and the final result was delicious. I ate two for breakfast.

Books I have read recently

Since I've been taking the subway and there's a branch of Toronto's excellent public library near me, I've been reading a lot. I just put holds on books I might find interesting online, and then get an email when they're ready to be picked up. So in no particular order, here's what I've been reading lately:

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme - I haven't actually seen Julie & Julia. I'm horrible at watching movies, even ones that I know I'll like. But I borrowed this from my mom and devoured it. Of course, it made me want to live in France, etc etc. But it also gave me a lot of admiration for Julia Child, since I haven't watched her show much and didn't know much about her.

In Search of Memory by Eric Kandel - This book was great. Eric Kandel is a Nobel-winning neuroscientist who fled Vienna with his family at the beginning of WW2, started out planning planning to be a psychoanalyst, and eventually reinvented himself (and later, his lab) as a cell biologist, biochemist, and finally molecular biologist, all for the goal of trying to determine the biological basis of memory. The book was pretty heavy on the science (although not particularly obscure or technical) and it's obvious that he was totally devoted to his research. But the most interesting part for me was to read about how his research played out over decades (a perspective that I am sorely lacking), and how he collaborated with a wide variety of people in order to tackle problems in various subfields. I want to find more books like this - any recommendations?

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones - Judith Jones is the editor behind Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, as well as many other cookbooks, etc. She also had an interesting life, going to Paris for a trip and then...staying. In 1948. She recently wrote a book about cooking for one, something she had to do after her husband passed away.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - Been meaning to read this for a while. Excellent book but very sad. Not much else to say except that I recommend it. Just put a hold on his other book, A Thousand Splendid Suns.

The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager - This book is about the discovery and development of the Born-Haber process, which is used to turn gaseous nitrogen (which is plentiful but useless biologically) into the useful form that is the basis, among other things, fertilizer and explosives. It sounds boring but it was actually a really interesting book. I had no idea how important this development was, and the role of the German chemical companies in the Second World War was also all new to me.

This list doesn't include the many cookbooks I've also taken out recently. But I don't read those on the subway.

Crisis at 0ºC

I reached a point where I had to actually take stuff out of my freezer and store it in the fridge for a couple days in order to be able to close the freezer door. The issue was mostly the 6 different varieties of soup (something like 15 servings total) I have in there. Plus a bunch of other stuff. So yeah, my name is Kate and I am a soupaholic.

But I've managed to deal with the problem by....eating lots of soup. It's actually a good thing I did have that much, to be honest, because I've been working a lot and not wanting to cook many nights. (I know, crazy) Plus, being able to pop a frozen block of soup and an apple in my bag for lunch = very handy.

I bought a buttercup squash a little while ago, and today I picked up some cheese and spinach, and tomorrow I'm going to make a cheesy squashy baked pasta thing that sort of exists in my head and is sort of spread out over several foodblogs. The spinach is so I can eat just that for dinner and not feel like I'm shorting myself on vegetables. One of the consequences of being so busy is that I've become enamored of simple one-dish meals (see: soup crisis), which is not in itself a bad thing. Less dishes to wash, anyway.

Link: Jacqueline Church on Sensible Sustainability

I cannot for the life of me remember from which site I was linked to this article, because it took me a day or two to get around to reading it.

Jacqueline Church presents a reasoned and, well, sensible look at the difficulty of choosing which foods are "best", and does it a million times better than I could.

One of her main points is that we should embrace incompetence. In realizing that the qualities of "good" food: local, organic, sustainable, (healthy, reasonably priced, ...) can often be in conflict with each other, and we shouldn't be looking for easy answers or a quick fix.

There's no point in me reiterating the whole article though, when you could be reading it right now. So go. Yes you. Git!