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Juggling jam jars and polishing poems
Exhausting times in the kitchens of chaos. Blackberry season is upon us, the apples are waxing and the corn has hit the shelves, or rather the bins of Silver Rill. The jam jars are filling, batch by batch. This week I’ve made two kinds: plum and blackberry, and salal, raspberry and blackberry. I’ve stewed blackberries and apples and picked some oregon grapes and juiced them ready for the next batch. I have accepted the cruel truth that there is not one plum to be had from my trees and am biding my time till the apples are fully ripe, dusting off the juicer in anticipation. I thawed some frozen apple, blackberry and carrot juice I made last summer and agreed with myself that baby carrots are the bee’s knees in a combo like that.
Between cauldrons of jam I looked up some information about writing competitions that’s come my way. Alors, you can sense the coming of autumn when you hear that the CBC Literary Awards competition is open already. The deadline this year is November 1st, 2006. Poets are advised to note that the word limits for poetry have been changed to between 1000 and 2000 words. A first prize of $6000 and a second prize of $4000 are awarded in each category, poetry, short story, and creative nonfiction. Winning texts are also published in enRoute magazine and broadcast on CBC Radio.
Well in advance of deadline, I visited the site of Poet’s Letter to read about the Beowulf Poetry Competition, whose first prize is a staggering £10,000.00, and which gives you until July 31, 2007 to get your entries in. The theme for the 2006/07 Prize is Poetry of Cities (anything and everything about cities: living, growing up, working, falling in love, buildings, architecture, engineering, arts, culture, food, suffering, agonies and joys).
The July issue of Poet’s Letter magazine features our very own Victorian, Yvonne Blomer, who had wandered off to England for year to earn her University of East Anglia MA.
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The 100th post
Goodness, I have blogged 100 times since February.
Years ago, when I was still naively eyeing the glossy chrome and enamel glitz of Kitchen Aid mixers, pining after industrial-looking Kenwood kitchen machines, and had bought a wimpy but ever-so compact Braun all-in-one mixer/food processor/blender to fit in my tiny English cupboard, my mother had the wisdom to snap up a couple of Bosch kitchen machines for herself and my sister-in-law. These are serious mixers, but more importantly they sell on the principle that you keep them for life and add bits and pieces as you need them. Mine has a blender and slicer/shredder in addition to the mixer with its whisk and dough hooks and has been churning along happily for over 20 years, its white finish yellowing but its motor unfazed by anything I throw at it. The local supplier is helpful and creative, and her very useful website now offers online cooking courses by the batch, using simple narrated slideshows. There’s a free one on making bread in 1 hour 15 minutes, and if that doesn’t make you rush out and buy a Bosch right now I don’t know what will.
There’s a good discussion about poetry on CBC’s Canada Reads pages. During this year’s Canada Reads series, the question was asked, What makes something a poem and not paragraph? and the query was finally answered by several poets. I thought Susan Musgrave’s response was particularly good: “It troubles me that others worry about this distinction (between what is poetry and what is prose): either the poem affects you, or it does not.”
Another literary competition with a charity reaping the rewards has a looming deadline. The Canadian Aid charity offers commercial publication of a previously unpublished book-length manuscript. Deadline is August 31.
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Pie night at the hacienda
A reminder that the Being At Work poetry competition closes today. They will accept emailed submissions – but if you do that don’t forget to send a donation to the Movement for Canadian Literacy in lieu of an entry form (with your return address for tax receipt) to: LivingWork.ca P.O. Box 41171 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 5K9
We had a pie double whammy last night. To start with I made my first pizza in years and years and was thrilled to find it closely resembled my favourite Pizza Express selection, the Siciliana. I do not own a pizza stone but it worked fine on one of those pizza pans with holes in the bottom for circulation. Unfortunately it didn’t last long enough to photograph, but I trust you all know what a pizza looks like. Here’s my recipe:
Rhona’s Pizza Siciliana
Crust:
3/4 c warm water
1 pkg yeast
1 tsp sugar
1-3/4 c flour
1-1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
* Dissolve the yeast and sugar in about 3 tbsp of the warm water. Let stand 5-10 minutes until foamy. Mix the flour and salt together and place in mixing bowl: add the dissolved yeast and the rest of the water, mixing together until you have a soft pliable dough, adding a little flour as needed. Knead for 8-10 minutes until smooth and elastic. As you knead, chant to yourself: this will make my arms strong for badminton. (Or throw the lot into your mixer with the dough hooks and just walk away for 10 minutes, until you get the same result less the exercise.)
* Place the dough in a large greased bowl, cover with plastic, and leave for 1-2 hours to double in bulk.
* Punch it down, knead into a ball and then roll out to fit a 12″ pizza pan. Place on a plate or tray sprinkled with cornmeal. You can at this stage cover and refrigerate or freeze till needed, because you will be busy making…
Sauce:
1 small can tomato paste (about 1/3 cup)
1 tomato paste can water
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp good quality olive oil
1/2 tsp oregano
dash pepper
dash tabasco
* Spread half the sauce over the pizza and top with:
2-3 thin slices ham, in 1/4 inch strips
2-3 canned (not marinated) artichoke hearts, quartered
1-2 tbsp chopped black (kalamata are nice) olives
1 large garlic clove, chopped finely (not pressed, you have to be able to sprinkle it)
2-3 white mushrooms, sliced
Drizzle the other half of the sauce over the toppings and sprinkle with:
1 generous cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan
* Finish with:
2 tbsp good quality olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
* Heat the pizza pan and the oven to 425f. Slide the pizza onto the pizza pan and cook for 20-25 minutes until the base and the topping are golden.
I have a Transparent Apple tree (yes Virginia, you can see the apples) which has started to toss away its fruit, so I am in my annual scramble for apple recipes. For dessert we had fake tarte tatin, from a wonderfully devious Delia recipe. It is incredibly simple and pure. I strongly advise you dispense with the cinnamon, and don’t bother making pastry: use puff pastry. As you will see my end product doesn’t look quite like Delia’s but the taste is reliably heavenly.
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In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
