Got berries? Make clafoutis!

It's a French brunch-y thing conveniently suited to the berries of a prairie summer. It's tradition in France to leave the pits in the cherries, so you decide...

2 tbsp butter
3 eggs
3 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup flour
1 tbsp flour
2 cup mixed berries such as cherries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, low bush cranberries, saskatoons. You can also add some thinly sliced rhubarb.

Heat the oven to 350F. Put butter in a 10-inch cast iron skillet or a pie plate. Place in oven until butter is melted but not brown.

Meanwhile, in a blender mix eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and salt. With the blades running, add 1 cup flour and blend well.

Toss fruit with remaining 1 tbsp flour.

Remove the skillet or pie plate from the oven. Pour in the batter and scatter the fruit on top. Return to the oven. Bake about 20-25 minutes, until the centre of the custard is set.

Serve warm with a dusting of icing sugar or cool with a drizzle of syrup.

A Berry Healthy Winter's Day

Long before there were Florida oranges and an apple-a-day, berries were keeping us happy and healthy through the long winter months. Fact is, berries are better for you than just about any other fruit.

Berries were vital to the well-being of the indigenous population, who made a kind of fruit leather by pounding berries and drying them in the sun. This was eaten raw or reconstituted in hot water or soup. They made pemmican by mixing berries with bison meat and suet, a power food that kept for months without refrigeration. They sold it by the sack-full to European explorers and fur traders, making it the first processed food industry on the Canadian plains.

The early settlers were wild for berries at a time when any other fresh fruit was hard to find. Back then, wild berries grew much more abundantly than they do today. Early memoirs relate tales of picking parties heading out for wild strawberries, raspberries, chokecherries, gooseberries, saskatoons and blueberries by the bucketful.

John Diefenbaker, Canada's thirteenth Prime Minister, remembers his parents picking like crazy in berry season, listing a typical haul at 30 quarts of strawberries, 50 quarts of saskatoons and 100 quarts of raspberries. A quart is the size of a large pickle jar.

By the time I came along, it was hard to find a wild raspberry or strawberry but, fortunately, domesticated varieties had been planted on the farm. We had a large berry patch and, from an early age, I loved to pick. I loved being outside on a hot summer day with the buzz of insects and the scent of dry grass. I loved the rhythm of picking, like a meditative exercise that occupies the body but frees the mind.

Best of all, I love eating those berries in the depths of winter. Toast with raspberry jelly. Cranberry scones with strawberry preserve. Blueberry smoothies. Chokecherry syrup on pancakes. And, of course, saskatoon berry pie.

Now there's a new berry on my pick list: the tart prairie cherry developed by fruit breeders at the University of Saskatchewan. It's perfect for cherry pie or a fruit compote on roast pork.

One year, my husband and I did an experiment in local eating, choosing not to buy imported fruit from the grocery store and relying on prairie fruit alone. We ate berries in one form or another almost every day. In the spring, he made a surprising observation: neither of us had suffered a cold all winter long. All things being equal, was our local berry diet responsible for our good health?

I like to think so. Berries are high in vitamin C, rich in antioxidants and full of flavonoids (the dark red, purple and blue colours) to boost the immune system and fight disease. Berries are as good as fruit gets.

This recipe is a great way to show them off. Clafoutis (cla-foo-tee) is a French dessert traditionally made with cherries (often unpitted, as the pits are said to add extra flavour) but I like to make a prairie version with a mix of berries I picked myself. It's perfect for brunch any time of year.

Prairie Berry Clafoutis
Use fresh or frozen berries (or a mix of both). In season, you can also add some sliced young rhubarb to the berry blend.

2 tbsp butter
3 eggs
3 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup flour
1 tbsp flour
2 cup mixed berries such as cherries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, low bush cranberries, saskatoons

Heat the oven to 350F. Put butter in a 10-inch cast iron skillet or a pie plate. Place in oven until butter is melted but not brown.

Meanwhile, in a blender mix eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and salt. With the blades running, add 1 cup flour and blend well.

Toss fruit with remaining 1 tbsp flour.

Remove the skillet or pie plate from the oven. Pour in the batter and scatter the fruit on top. Return to the oven. Bake about 20-25 minutes, until the centre of the custard is set.

Serve warm with a dusting of icing sugar or cool with a drizzle of syrup.

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

Scientific minds meet green thumbs!

Saskatoon biotech company, Prairie Plant Systems, is using lab technologies and plant cloning to produce thousands of haskap, sour cherry and Saskatoon berry bushes -- varieties developed at the University of Saskatchewan fruit breeding program. Each plant starts as a tiny cutting set into an agar substrate -- no soil required!

"This medium contains all the nutrients that the plants need to grow without having a root system." -- CEO Brent Zettl

The little seedlings are then planted in soil and placed in the warm mist tent, where they grow roots and a thicker skin.

Finally they're moved into the greenhouse. In 3-4 months, the seedlings will be ready for planting outdoors. You can buy them at local nurseries in and around Saskatoon.

Read more about Prairie Plant Systems and haskap berries in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Ice Cream with Local Flavours

My food column in today's Star Phoenix explored the delights of locally-made ice cream with Saskatchewan-grown flavours. Strawberry swirl, raspberry chocolate chunk, cherry fudge, apple pie, saskatoon berry and much more...

I featured four options in Saskatoon:

Prairie Sun Orchard makes ice cream with fruit from its own orchard. It doesn't get more "back to the land" than that! Available at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market and at River Landing. Pictured is Meaghan Reynolds serving me an ice cream cone at the River Landing kiosk.

Homestead Ice Cream on Victoria Ave. has several local flavours on tap, some of them seasonal. Ice cream aficionado Lynn Davey enjoys making ice cream, frozen yogurt and sauces with city-grown fruit delivered by patrons to her back door. Why waste good fruit?

At Jerry's Food Emporium on 8th St., there are several local flavours on the ice cream/gelato menu. Owner Elyse Proulx-Cullen learned to make gelato in Italy. Jerry's flavours are also sold at Saskatoon Co-ops, City Perks Cafe, Casino Regina and the Yellow Fender in Christopher Lake. The sour cherry gelato is yummmm.

Finally, my favourite: sea buckthorn gelato by Northern Vigor Berries. Sea buckthorn is a small orange berry with a tart tropical taste. It's made on contract at Jerry's and sold by Northern Vigor at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market.

Do you know a place to get locally-made ice cream with Saskatchewan-grown flavours? Send a comment and let us know!

Spirited Fruits

If you like fruits with spirit, you're sure to like this... Souleio Foods is presenting its "orchard" of fruit spirits including Carmincello (made with Saskatchewan's Carmine Jewel cherries), Citronello and Creme de Cassis (black current) along with its two newest fruit spirits, Simply Sinful Haskap and Misaskwatomina Saskatoon Berry. These spirits at made in-house at Souleio and most of them (expect the citron) are make with locally-grown fruit.

Taste, nibble and learn more about fruity spirits from the folks at Living Sky fruit winery and the U of S plant researchers who bred these fruits for Saskatchewan.

When: Saturday, August 30, 7 pm.

Where: Souleio Foods, 265 3rd Ave. South, Saskatoon

Tickets: $20 in advance only -- call 978-8102

See you there!

Delicious Christmas Gift

I always say the best gifts are edible, so I was delighted to receive this basket from Over the Hill Orchards for Christmas. The basket includes jelly, toppings and chocolates made with Saskatchewan-grown cherries, blueberries and saskatoons. I'll write more about each item as we open and enjoy it. 

Over the Hill Orchards is a venture of Dean and Sylvia Kreutzer, who live near Lumsden. Their primary fruit crop is the sour cherry developed at the University of Saskatchewan, which they sell under the trademark of Prairie Cherry. I love their packaging and think it's a great "ambassador" for the new wave of professional food processing in Saskatchewan.

Valentine's Day is fast approaching so why not give a "bottle of red" to your special someone. Check out the range of products on the orchard website. 

Cherry Festival

Spent a lovely day at the Bruno Cherry Festival selling my book and, before returning home, stopping at the Pulvermacher. butcher for their famous cherry smokies.

Newspaper Column - Community Shared Farms

This article appeared today in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Keith Neu has a funny way of putting it: “If you want food security, either marry a farmer or pay one to farm for you.” Well, 100 people have opted for the latter. They pay Neu a monthly fee to become “members” of his farm at Hudson Bay.

On a regular basis, Neu delivers the produce of the farm to his 100 customers in Saskatoon and Regina. Depending on the client and the time of year, his food boxes might include eggs, chicken, beef, grains and various vegetables, fresh or frozen.

His operation is called a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture or Community Shared Agriculture. It’s a nifty scheme whereby his clients pay up front for their food, taking a stake both financially and emotionally in the success of the farm. For the farmer, it means a steadier income when he needs it for buying seed and hiring summer help, plus the benefit of a supportive and dedicated clientele which Neu refers to as his “farm family.”

CSAs are quite popular in urban areas across North America, but they’re just gaining ground around Saskatoon. They’re a great option for those who want to eat locally, but don’t garden themselves and can’t make it to a farmers’ market often enough. The food comes to you. CSAs can take many forms and financial models, but the underlying goal is to create sense of community around a garden or a farm.

“I really like that connection with people who don’t have a lot of agricultural experience,” says Carmen Dyck who, with her husband Keith, runs an orchard CSA at Aberdeen. “Every time I make a delivery it takes twice as long as it should because I spend time talking with everybody. It’s really nice to have people who are interested and supportive of what we do.”

They started their CSA this spring with 21 members who pay $20 up front, then choose a delivery package that suites their needs. The orchard supplies saskatoons, sour cherries, gooseberries, currents and honeyberries, and they’ve planted apples, plums, pears and raspberries for future harvests.

To build a sense of community, they plan to hold special events in a renovated church moved to the orchard, and they include their members in any important decisions for the operation of the CSA.

The other day, I paid a visit to a vegetable CSA on an acreage at Furdale, just outside the city, where we sat on a bench near the garden while the tomatoes ripened and a big bluish rooster pecked in the grass. Susan Chalmers established her CSA this spring with 20 shareholders at $400 each. “The majority are young families who want their children to eat well and to know where their food is coming from,” she says. “They come out to visit the garden and play with the chickens. The demand for that type of experience is only going to grow.”

Her capacity is 20 shares, but she sells excess produce and eggs on the side. Here’s how to contact these CSAs:
* Just Susan’s Garden, Susan Chalmers: (306) 343-7990.
* Etomami Community Organic Farm, Keith Neu: (306) 865-2103; JustBeef.ca.
* Fruition Orchard, Carmen Dyck: (306) 933-9630: FruitionOrchards.blogspot.com.

I have not joined a CSA for a few reasons: I love gardening and going to the farmers’ market, so I’ve got a steady supply of produce, plus I have established sources for a number of other local foods. However, I’m happy to reap the bounty of a CSA, as when Chalmers sends me home with a basket of her tomatillos and a recipe for Salsa Verde. For the recipe, click here. If you know of other local CSAs, please send me a message on by clicking "comments."

Newspaper column - Breakfast

Published in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on 20 July 2009

You’ve all heard the advice: a healthy diet starts with a good breakfast. However, I contend that a healthy diet begins with a good Saskatchewan breakfast. So often when we talk about eating locally, we focus on the big meals—dinner with meat, veggies, salad and dessert. But it’s just as easy and just as fun to start each day with a taste of Saskatchewan.

A few years ago, my husband John and I decided to eat locally for a whole year. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. That year is up, but good habits are hard to break. We still stock our larder with locally-produced foods and breakfast is my favourite meal of the day.

This time of year, you may find me out early in the strawberry patch picking berries for a bowl of yogurt and homemade muesli. When the berries are this fresh and so delicious, breakfast is worth celebrating, so I often serve it in a martini glass. It looks as good as it tastes!

In the winter, I eat my muesli in a bowl with dried apples and cherries (that I dried myself) or with berries such as saskatoons and raspberries that I canned with a light honey syrup. Sometimes in winter, we get a warm start to the day with oatmeal porridge sweetened with honey or maple syrup.

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Whether for porridge or muesli, I always try to buy a bag of oats that specifically states it is a product of Saskatchewan. My homemade muesli includes nuts and seeds (which aren’t necessarily from here), plus locally-grown flax and hemp seeds, mixed with canola oil and honey, then toasted in the oven. (I buy the flax at the Saskatoon Farmer’s Market; the hemp seeds come from The Good Seed farm at Birch Hills.)
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Berry smoothies are also a great breakfast idea. We start with local Dairyland yogurt, add a banana, which isn’t local of course, and top it up with frozen blueberries, cranberries, saskatoons and/or strawberries, all locally picked, plus a dash of ground flax.

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When we have a little extra time, or when company is coming, John heats up the griddle and makes wild blueberry pancakes. If I’m cooking, we might have clafoutis, a terrifically easy breakfast custard from France, where it’s traditionally made with cherries. I use a mix of Saskatchewan berries, including the local sour cherry.

Speaking of traditional, bacon and eggs in our house are always local. We get them at the farmers market, or, if we’re at a local meat shop, we pick up good Saskatchewan-made bacon and breakfast sausages. (Currently, our freezer is stocked with breakfast sausage from the Smokehaus in Martensville.)

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As for toast and jam, it’s easy to be local. I make my own bread or buy it at a bakery such as Christie’s. My mom supplies the jam. While it might be hard to turn every breakfast into a local meal, here are some tips to get started:

1) Buy locally-made bacon and breakfast sausage. We have such good butchers in Saskatchewan, it’s easy to find quality products.
2) Pick extra strawberries, saskatoons and sour cherries this summer (available at u-picks) and freeze enough for a smoothie or clafoutis now and then. Wild blueberries may be found at the farmers market when they’re in season.
3) Reach labels and try to buy basic ingredients, such as eggs, oats, honey and flax, that are products of Saskatchewan.

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Here's the recipe for my homemade muesli. And here's the clafoutis (pronounced cla-foo-tee), which will impress everyone at breakfast time, especially the cook!

Prairie Berry Clafoutis
2 tbsp butter
3 eggs
3 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups mixed Saskatchewan berries
(fresh or frozen)
1 tbsp flour

Heat the oven to 350F. In the oven, melt the butter in a cast iron skillet or large pie plate, making sure the butter doesn’t brown.

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Put the eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and salt into a blender and blend until smooth. With the blades running, gradually add 1 cup of flour and mix well. Remove the buttered pan from the oven and pour in the batter.
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Toss the berries with the remaining tbsp of flour. Scatter the fruit over the top of the batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the centre of the custard is set. Serve warm, perhaps with a sprinkling of icing sugar.

Saskatchewan Food Festivals 2009

Hog Fest, June 26, Englefeld.
The 38th annual event. What else would you expect of a town with a giant pig?Saskatoon Berry Festival, July 4, Mortlach.
The second annual, and it looks like it will be a fantastic event.

Cherry Festival, July 25-26, Bruno.Plus a cherry cheesecake literary event on the 24th.
Rhubarb Festival, August 2 & 3, Marr Residence, Saskatoon
This historic pioneer house celebrates this hardy prairie "fruit".

Wheat Festival, August 7, 8 & 9, Weyburn.
The website still shows last year's event, but you get the picture.

The Great Canadian Mustard Festival, July 25-26, The Willow on Wascana, Regina.Chefs face off in the mustard challenge, and you're the judge! Several restaurants also feature mustard on the menu. The event doesn't seem to have a website, but there's some info on the SaskTourism site.Wild Blueberry Festival, August 21-22, St. Walburg.
The whole town gets involved so there's lots to see and do besides blueberries.
Pumkin Festival, end Sept., Pilger.
Giant pumpkin contest (see photo) and pumpkin lunch.

Chokecherry Festival, Thanksgiving weekend, Lancer
Going on 39 years now. Here're some photos from a past event.

Do you know of other festivals that celebrate Saskatchewan-produced food? Click comment and tell us all about it.

Locally made paté - Do it yourself!

A birthday gift to myself -- Charcuterie, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. Charcuterie refers to the processing of meat by smoking, curing, salting, drying, etc., and includes bacon, ham, sausages, paté, terrines, confit and more. I began with paté: Venison and Dried Sour Cherry Paté (wild venison and Saskatchewan sour cherries) and Paté de Grandmere (pork with chicken liver - pictured above). All major ingredients were locally procured. Making paté was a bit time-consuming, but not hard to do. These early forays into charcuterie were quite successsful. Next... I'm looking for a hog's head to make headcheese. (Which, contrary to popular misconception, does not include the brains!)

Newspaper Column - RHUBARB AND BERRY GALETTE

Published in the Star Phoenix, 20 April 2009.

The buzz word these days seems to be “frugal” and the kitchen is a good place to start. In Italy, they have a phrase to describe good, old-fashioned frugal cuisine — cucina povera (coo-chee’-na poe-ver’-a). It means food of the poor.

However, cucina povera is in no way inferior fare. It relies on the best, freshest, local ingredients, prepared with the care and flare of an imaginative cook. It’s a good concept to contemplate as we head into another growing season in Saskatchewan. Very soon, we’ll have an abundance of fresh local ingredients, from the tender rhubarb of spring to fall’s plump golden squash.

I first heard about cucina povera from Jennifer Willems, the innovative chef at the New Ground Café in Birch Hills, near Prince Albert. Jennifer’s blackboard menu changes every day (and sometimes more than once a day) depending on the local ingredients that arrive at her kitchen door. Her dedication to local flavours earned an invitation to Terra Madre in Italy, a symposium dedicated to preserving sustainable agriculture and the flavours of regional food around the world. She discovered cucina povera in small family-run restaurants in Italian towns.

“Simplicity is the rule. The tiniest kitchens could turn out the most amazing food with just five ingredients,” she says. “The things that I’m committed to were just natural there.”

What is cucina povera Saskatchewan-style? It could be different things to different people, depending on their cooking traditions and connections to locally-produced foods from lentils to apples to wild rice. For me, it’s a ham bone and lentil stew, or a mushroom and herb frittata, or a pasta sauce of fresh tender vegetables, or a pear tart made with fruit I picked myself.

Learning to cook with Saskatchewan ingredients is an interesting and satisfying exercise. Just ask the seven women with whom I attended a Saskatchewan Bounty cooking class last week in Saskatoon, at the kitchen of Wild Serendipity Foods.

The menu included pork loin rubbed in herbs, served with a wild blueberry sauce, northern whitefish in a lemon-dill sauce, wild rice pilaf with dried berries and a rustic rhubarb & sour cherry tart. I came home with some terrific new recipes for Saskatchewan ingredients and a burning anticipation for the first rhubarb of spring. This picture shows the rustic rhubarb & cherry tart we made in cooking class; this recipe is the version I make at home. Very cucina povera!

Rhubarb & Berry Galette

Use a mix of fresh or frozen berries such as: raspberries, strawberries, saskatoons, blueberries, sour cherries. You can also include apple in the mix.

5 cups of fruit, of which 1 cup is rhubarb, cut in small slices

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
Dash of salt
A bit of butter
Pastry for one-crust pie

Heat oven to 375F. Dice the larger fruit, such as the apple or strawberries. Combine the fruit and rhubarb in a bowl. Sprinkle on the flour, sugar and salt. Gently mix.

Place the pasty into a pie plate. Choose a pie plate that allows the pastry to hang about 1 inch (2.5 cm) over the edge. Scoop in the fruit mixture. Fold the loose edges of the pastry toward the centre, so it forms an open circle around the fruit. Dot the fruit here and there with a little pat of butter.

If you wish, brush the pastry with milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 375F for about 40 minutes, until the crust is golden and the filling bubbly. Allow the pie to cool before slicing.

Cherry Red

I'm not sure which is lovelier -- my Saskatchewan cherry pie or my Lee Valley watering can. (Considering that the creator of Lee Valley Tools grew up in Saskatchewan, I consider them both to be local commodities!) Thanks for the Evans cherries, Judith!

Local substitution - SOUR CHERRY BBQ MARINADE

The August issue of Food & Wine has a recipe for barbecue sauce made with tamarind because it "keeps the honey...from becoming too sweet..." Well, I thought, Saskatchewan cherries are tart. Why not a substitution? And so was born this sour cherry BBQ marinade. I first used it for baked pork ribs and today, I used it to marinate moose t-bone steaks. While the steaks were grilling, I boiled down the marinade to make a sauce. (Thank you Sue and Vance for the steaks. They were delicious!)

Sour Cherry BBQ Marinade
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup ketchup
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 cup frozen tart cherries, thawed
2 cloves garlic, thinly slices

Mix together the ingredients, pressing on the cherries to release their juice.

CBC Radio calling - Berry Recipes

Here are some of my favourite ways to serve Saskatchewan berries, including this delighful dessert which I call Strawberries Between the Sheets.

Prairie Berry Clafoutis
Lingonberry Pinwheels
Wild Rice with Dried Cherries
Bumbleberry Pie
Saskatoon Berry Cobbler

The story of a cherry pie

I picked the cherries myself.* I pitted them myself. I made the pie myself. But I didn't eat it myself. Thank you Maureen, Tony, Jim and John for eating my pie, and thanks for leaving a little piece leftover for my breakfast!

(*At the Yoanna U-Pick Orchard at Radisson, Saskatchewan)

Newspaper Column - WILD RICE & DRIED CHERRY SALAD

Published in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 20 November 2006.

As we enter the gift-giving season, I would like to extol the virtues of presenting gifts of food. I am not referring to boxed chocolates and imported Christmas cakes in cellophane. I am talking about gifts from our own larders.

I love getting gifts at the best of times, but a gift of food produced by your own hands is the most personal gift of all. No need to buy it, wrap it or return it. Just eat it! Not long ago, my neighbour Andrea popped her head over the fence to give me a container of her crabapple butter. I reciprocated with some wild blueberries I had picked up north. We gave chanterelle mushrooms to Ramesh and Karen and they gave us two bags of their fingerling potatoes. Eva gave us her lingonberry sauce made with wild cranberries. Berni’s dad gave us the most delectable little frozen strawberries in syrup. Gail and Mark gave us ‘biltong’, a South African venison jerky.
My sister-in-law Tallie came begging for a big zucchini to make her favourite chocolate cake. I was happy to oblige.

My list of food-getting and food-giving is long and delicious, and there is nothing I like better to give or receive. I think sharing the produce of our land, and the fruits of our kitchen labour, is the most generous and thoughtful gift we can give from the heart. The only thing that might make it even better is when accompanied by a favourite recipe that makes the most of the gift.

For instance, a reader of this column, Genevieve Salamon, gave me a couple bottles of her homemade vinegars and the technique for making them. One was flavoured with saskatoon berries and the other with herbs from her garden. I was tickled pink. In my quest to celebrate Saskatchewan foods, I have tried to source every staple product, whenever possible, from local sources. So, a couple bottles of flavoured vinegars were much appreciated.

Genevieve says they are easy to make: Purchase pickling vinegar from the grocery store. (She uses pickling vinegar because it has 7% acidity as opposed to 5% in regular vinegar.) Warm the vinegar on the stove or in the microwave. Pour one litre of warm vinegar over 1 cup of saskatoon berries (fresh or frozen), cover and leave at room temperature for 2-3 weeks. After it is well steeped, drain the berries from the vinegar and discard them. Using new berries, fill bottles at a ratio of four parts vinegar to one part berries. Seal and steep another week or two before using.
For herb vinegar, follow the same technique using mixed herbs such as sage, savory, dill, tarragon, coriander seeds, etc.

My mom makes a terrific berry salad with a raspberry vinaigrette. It is her new favourite recipe for family gatherings, and we all love it, too. So, I decided to try it with a vinaigrette made with Genevieve’s saskatoon flavoured vinegar instead. Mom’s salad calls for lettuce, but I substituted wild rice. Instead of dried blueberries and cranberries, I used Saskatchewan sour cherries I had picked and dried myself. And so, in the end, it really wasn’t my mom’s salad anymore, but that is how a new favourite recipe comes to life. I took it to a potluck dinner at our friends, Jo and Kevin’s place, which we had with grilled smoked salmon, pumpkin soup and a bumbleberry pie made by their kids.

I believe it is important and creative to adapt recipes for the foods we have on hand, rather than running out to the grocery store for every little thing. That way, our dinner table is always fresh, in season and if we’re lucky, a real gift of the land.

Not Quite My Mom's
Wild Rice & Dried Cherry Salad
3 green onions, finely chopped
2 cups small broccoli florets
2 cups small cauliflower florets
3 cups cooked wild rice
1 cup dried sour cherries
1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/4 cup thinly sliced almonds

Mix everything together in a serving bowl. Dress with a homemade fruity vinaigrette (I made it with raspberry syryp) or do as my mom does and use a store-bought raspberry vinaigrette.

Berries galore - BUMBLEBERRY PIE

Last week, I spent a couple days at a Benedictine Monastery at Muenster, Saskatchewan, where the monks fill their days by keeping marvellous gardens. Brother Basil, the chief farmer, showed me around the grounds on his golf cart. Later, I walked out past the cemetery to the raspberry patch and picked a pail of amber raspberries.

I had never tasted amber raspberries before. They are sweeter and more delicate than the common red raspberry, and so delicious. Now I’m eating them every day (or twice a day!) before they go soft. This Bumbleberry Pie is a good way to use a variety of berries and fruit when you don’t have enough for one pie on its own. In addition to the amber raspberries, I used raspberries (picked at Don's house), lush strawberries from the Strawberry Ranch, my own rhubarb, my mom’s saskatoon berries and crabapples we picked over our neighbours' fence.

BUMBLEBERRY PIE
5 cups of fruit, of which 1 cup is tart apple
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
dash of salt
a bit of butter
prepared pastry crust

Peel, core and chop the apple. Chop the other large fruit like rhubarb and big strawberries. Combine all the fruit in a bowl and toss with the flour to coat. Mix in the sugar and the salt.

Roll the pastry so it will have an overhand of at least one inch when placed in the pie plate. Place it into the plate and scoop in the fruit. Dot here and there with bit of butter. Fold the loose edges of pastry over the top of the filling so that it forms a rough circle around the edge of the pie; the centre remains uncovered. (This method uses less pastry crust and allows everyone to see how pretty the fruit looks after it’s cooked.) You can sprinkle the crust with sugar, if you like. Bake at 375 for about 30-40 minutes, until the crust is cooked.

Newspaper - CLAFOUTIS

This column first appeared in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix on 17 April 2006

Every now and then, my husband and I go on the egg diet, during which we try our best to eat eggs three times a day. For instance, we may have pancakes for breakfast, egg salad sandwiches for lunch and an omelet for supper. Or, scrambled eggs for breakfast, a spinach salad for lunch and Spaghetti Carbonara (an Italian dish made with eggs and bacon) at the end of the day.

When you think of it, it’s amazing how many different ways there are to eat eggs. Few foods can make the transition from breakfast to dessert as easily as eggs. When we talk about incompetent cooks, we say they can’t even boil an egg. When we talk about gifted cooks, we may think of the perfect, un-deflated soufflé.

My husband and I buy free-range eggs from a farmer, which means the eggs are laid by hens that eat grass and bugs and get their daily exercise. These eggs range in shades from pure white to fawn beige, and range in size from regular to double-yolk big. Every three or four weeks, the farmer arrives at my door in Saskatoon with 20 dozen eggs. I use what I need and resell the rest to my city friends who appreciate this little taste of country. Sometimes my friends don’t need eggs and so we have a couple dozen left in the fridge when the farmer is due to arrive again. Thus, the egg diet. We need to use up what we have before the new batch arrives.

It’s kind of funny that I should turn out to be an Egg Lady because my mother was an Egg Lady when I was growing up on the farm at Craik. We kept a pen of laying hens and mom sold the extra eggs to her friends for 25 cents a dozen. As children, we had to gather the eggs. Twice a day, we would slip into the chicken coop, shoo the chickens off their roosts and scoop up the warm eggs. I didn’t particularly like doing this and would often trade with my brothers – I’d do their dishes if they did my eggs. We all thought we got the best of that deal.

Many people will be eating hardboiled eggs this week, leftovers from the Easter celebration. However, eggs have been associated with spring festivals since long before Easter was inspired 2,000 years ago. The ancient Persians gave out coloured eggs to celebrate spring. The goddess of fertility was known, over time, as Ishtar, Ostara and finally Eastre in old Europe to denote her association with the sun rising in the east on the morning of the spring equinox. Her symbol was an egg.

One of my favourite ways to eat eggs is Clafoutis (kla-foo-tee), a sweet flan from France often served warm for breakfast or brunch. Unlike some French delicacies, it is wonderfully simple and easy to prepare. It is traditionally made with cherries, but I give it a Saskatchewan flavour by using a mix of prairie berries.

PRAIRIE BERRY CLAFOUTIS
2 tbsp. butter
3 eggs
3 tbsp. sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup flour
2 cups mixed berries (sour cherries, raspberries, strawberries, saskatoons)
1 tbsp. flour

Heat the oven to 350 degrees C. In the oven, melt the butter in a 10-inch cast iron skillet (or a similar sized baking pan), making sure the butter doesn’t brown. In a blender mix the eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and salt. With the blades running, gradually add the flour and mix well. Pour the batter into the buttered skillet. Toss the berries with a tablespoon of flour then scatter the fruit over the top of the batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the centre of the custard is set (test by inserting a knife). Serve warm, perhaps with a sprinkling of icing sugar or a drizzle of maple syrup.

Week 48 - PRAIRIE BERRY CLAFOUTIS

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week – 15 March 2006

Breakfast – Yogurt and cherry sauce.
Lunch – Lentil soup. Clafoutis.
Dinner – Spaghetti Carbonera. Green salad.


PRAIRIE BERRY CLAFOUTIS
Clafouis (kla-foo-tea’) is a sweet "pancake" from France, often served hot for breakfast or brunch. Unlike some French delicacies, it is wonderfully simple and easy to prepare. It is traditionally made with cherries, but I like to use a mix of Saskatchewan berries such as strawberries, cherries, raspberries and saskatoons.

In the summer when the berries are fresh, I freeze them individually on a cookie sheet, then pack them into airtight containers. This prevents the juicy berries from freezing into one solid block, making it much easier to remove just a handful at a time.

2 T butter
3 eggs
3T sugar
1c milk
1/2t vanilla
1/4t salt
1c flour
2c mixed sour cherries, raspberries, strawberries and saskatoons (you can also include some fresh rhubarb in the mix.)
1T flour

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. In the oven, melt the butter in a 10-inch cast iron skillet (or a similar sized baking pan), making sure the butter doesn’t brown. In a blender mix the eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and salt. With the blades running, gradually add the flour and mix well. Pour the batter into the buttered skillet. Toss the berries with a tablespoon of flour, then scatter the fruit over the top of the batter. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the centre of the custard is set. Serve warm, perhaps with a sprinkling of icing sugar or a drizzle of syrup.