works of wanderlust

Month: January 2022

  • Meta Monday & Moving Forward

    The inevitable question that every blogger faces is balancing all the pieces of time, effort, content, ideas, and purpose.

    You may have noticed (if you are a regular reader) that as of late my posting rate has dropped off to somewhere much lower than daily.

    This has been a factor of a number of things: a vacation that spanned into the New Year, the never-ending pandemic which I assumed would end much sooner and leave me open to exploring more adventure content, a couple other little side projects that have captured my attention, work (of course) which is getting busier with a couple big new projects, and so many other little details.

    That said, I love writing here and it gives me so much joy to explore cooking and adventure and running and all the other little topics I write about in a space that is my own.

    But I also want that to be a quality effort.

    Posting daily is a great way to be consistent and force yourself to write, but it also leads to (and I’ll be the first to admit this) a lot of filler content.

    And maybe, who knows, someday I’ll be inspired to write here daily again and keep up that pace that I tried so frantically (yes, it’s a lot of work) to keep in 2021.

    For now, however, I’m going to keep writing but continue as I’ve done for the first month of this year so far on longer, more carefully planned and written content that is on topic and interesting to readers. I’ll try to write, say, three or so posts per week but in doing so avoid the sidebars and more casual “filler” writing to hit a daily post quota.

    With nearly three hundred posts in my archives, this blog is not going anywhere … but hopefully the next three hundred will hone closer into my original mission of bringing my readers interesting ideas about uncomplicated things, life lived, and a mindset that reflects the philosophical practicality of well-seasoned cast iron frying pan, enduring, simple, down-to-earth & extremely useful… just not daily.

  • Cheesy Garlic Pan Bread

    Back in December I was going through my end-of-the-year questions and spent a post lamenting the fact that despite baking up a lot of sourdough, I hadn’t spent much time exploring the potential of my starter as a starter for other recipes besides bread.

    A goal for 2022 was to branch out, and the suggestions I gave myself in that post were to try some variety of recipes such as doughnuts, bagels or english muffins.

    Instead, as inspiration would have it, I started instead with a crusty pan bread.

    The Youtube algorithm tends to show me a lot of baking content these days, and my playlist offered up a recipe for a thick crust pan pizza. I skipped the pizza part and instead used some of the pizza advice and a half a recipe of my sourdough bread to whip up a tasty cheese bread that complimented our evening meal of beef stew.

    cheesy garlic pan bread

    500g bread flour
    350g water
    12g salt
    250g active sourdough starter
    250g hard cheese
    3 garlic cloves
    60ml olive oil
    10g finishing salt

    I made my basic sourdough recipe using the flour, water, salt and starter. This went through the typical hydration and folding cycle and then got covered and popped into the fridge overnight. Technically, I only used half of this to make the pan bread and used the other half to bake some simple sourdough rolls, but I’m sure any innovative baker can figure out something clever to do with half a recipe of ready-to-rise sourdough dough.

    I oiled up my ten inch cast iron pan (using half the oil) and halving the dough from above, I balled and then flattened it, shaping it into a thick disk that sat about an inch from all sides of the pan. It was about 8am when I did this, and I wouldn’t go onto the next step until nearly 5pm when the dough disk had risen to a lovely volume that was closer to being ready to bake.

    My folks had given us a huge wedge of gouda cheese as part of a Christmas basket, so I grated down a bunch of that. I also crushed the garlic in the remaining oil. Just like one might do with a loaf of foccacia I dimpled the surface of my dough disk with my finger tips then spread the garlic oil roughly over the surface.

    Here’s the first trick I learned from that Youtube video. I took about half the grated cheese and made a thick edge right up against the edge of the disk and touching the cast iron. The point here is that as is melts it drips along the crack and gets all fried and crusty making a crispy cheesy edge.

    The point is, you want the cheese (and quite a bit of it) right up to the edge of the dough.

    With a saltier cheese I may have skipped this extra finishing salt sprinkled atop this whole creation. I like salty garlic bread, probably an artifact of growing up on garlic bread made from buttered toast sprinkled with garlic salt not real garlic, but it really does bring an added dimension to the finished product.

    This spent 28 minutes in a 425F oven, but I was watching it carefully for the last five.

    The second trick I learned from that Youtube video came right at the end. I checked the browning on the crust of the bread after I pulled it out of the oven to make sure it wasn’t too brown (it wasn’t) and then lit up the stovetop where I continued frying the bread right there in the cast iron pan for another 3 minutes. That crust just browned up a little more and it popped out of the pan glorious and crusty and cheesy as I expected.

    My biggest problem was making sure there was some left over for tomorrow.

    It was delicious, fresh and steaming hot from the oven, and I’ll be adding this to my regular rotation for family meals or perhaps even to share with friends some day again.

  • Friday Fires, Winter Snow Edition

    When I checked out of work for the week at the end of the day today, the sun was still high enough in the sky for it to be considered daylight.

    It’s been cold for most of the week, that deep, chilling cold that makes it difficult to do much besides curl up on the couch and watch bad television. We tried taking the dog for a walk mid-week and turned around because between the icy sidewalks and the brutally cold wind it was simply stupid and dangerous to be outside.

    So, that it was merely a few degrees below freezing after work and still light out, I decided to light a fire.

    I mean, I literally had to shovel the fire pit out of a knee deep snow drift in our backyard, and trudge a path to the firewood at the back of the yard.

    It took nearly an hour to warm up the bowl enough that it would burn longer than a few minutes without going out, but after a while I got a nice flame going and was able to sit for a half an hour and sip a drink while I fought off the evening cold with the dim flames.

    It felt good.

    I mean, there is something grounding about sitting beside a fire after spending the week staring at screens, something that is tough to explain but ultimately results in a bit of respite for one’s mental health and general peace of mind.

    I may need to hit up the grocery store for something interesting to cook over a fire this weekend, now that (after all that work shoveling and melting) I’ve primed my pit up properly for winter.

  • Local Flours Sours: Duchess Bread (Part One)

    You know your family thinks you are slightly obsessed about something when supporting your hobby winds up under the Christmas tree in holiday gift form.

    After baking some hundreds of loaves of sourdough the last couple years, I guess my family has noticed my obsession. This year I received a 5kg bag of bread flour under the Christmas tree.

    But let me back up…

    There is a well-known local French-style bakery in Edmonton called Duchess Bake Shop.

    There are now two locations, but for years but one address served a frequently long line up of customers selling pastries and sweets from a building in a gentrified neighbourhood just west of the downtown core.

    I’m not really a sweets and confections guy, but I respect a good local bakery, and I’ve stood in my share of queues for a box of goodies from Duchess.

    My wife, on the other hand, will line up for a week for the right cookie. And in her quest to locate and single-handedly support all our local bakeries through tough pandemic financial times, she has become well acquainted with the online menus of many of these local establishments.

    As it turns out, Duchess not only sells baked goods but also sells baking ingredients, including — that’s right — 5kg bags of their own custom bread flour blend.

    Holiday mode now falling behind us as we resume our normal back to the grind lives, I cracked open my Christmas present and prepped my standard sandwich loaf dough with 500g of bakery bread flour blend.

    Now details on both the bag and the website are scarce, so I don’t know exactly what makes this flour special or unique in any way. Maybe it’s locally milled. Maybe it’s a unique blend prepared for the French bakery’s secret receipes. Or maybe it’s just flour and it has been bagged for the sole purpose of supporting their charity of choice.

    Either way, I’ve got a pair of loaves proofing on the counter and my obsession-meets-gift flour will soon be transformed into some delicious sourdough. It gives a new meaning to “Christmas bread.”

    Check back for part two to find out how it turned out!

  • Race Report: Disney World 2022

    Sunday Runday, and just over a week after rolling through the finish line of three Florida Disney World races, I did a (socially distanced) ten klick run back with the crew through the icy streets of Edmonton.

    Amazing. Crazy. Chaotic. Nostalgic. Insane.

    What other words can one use to describe the first international mega race back after a multi-year break from the same.

    Exactly eight years ago I was standing on the same set of start lines getting ready to run (that time) four races. Back then I’d signed up for the inaugural Dopey Challenge, four days of four races starting with a 5k, ending with a full marathon, and tucking a 10k and a half in the blurry middle of it all.

    This year, I cautiously signed up to do the first three of that series.

    So, on that Thursday about ten days ago, all three of us, my wife, my daughter and I, woke up at 3am, found our way to a shuttle bus stop, trotted through the security mayhem outside Epcot, and queued up to run the five kilometer loop through that parks winding walkways.

    My wife and daughter are not runners, but they are not out of shape either. We followed the crowd and dashed along the route and crossed the finish line to applause and medals.

    I repeated the next day, but solo. Bus. Security. Race corral. Ten kilometers looping through two parks instead of one, past our first hotel of the trip, and ending with a musical pre-dawn dash under the glowing blue orb of Epcot’s Spaceship Earth as we pushed to the finish line.

    I wore a mask the whole run. I wore a mask for all the runs. There were crowds and people and more crowds and on top of it all there were even more crowds. I have not been around that many heavily breathing runners in years and I’m surprised I didn’t bring home a viral souvenir from the experience.

    Did I mention crazy and insane?

    On the third day I woke up at 3am one last time and made my way to an even bigger starting corral with an even bigger crowd. It would be fair to say that somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand people stood at that start line, and if more than ten or fifteen of them were wearing masks I would have been surprised.

    I went out in the second wave, with another dozen or so behind me.

    We ran up the dark highway to the sounds of Disney movie soundtracks blasting from speakers. The path brought us under the park gate and through the parking lots and past the Contemporary resort and between the turnstiles of the Magic Kingdom. I held my phone out in front of me recording video as I ran onto and up Main Street:

    I paused at a few spots for photos.

    I absorbed the moments.

    I kept on running.

    Did I mention amazing and nostalgic?

    In a short kilometer or so we were out the back gates of the park, running past some utility buildings and behind Splash Mountain as we disappeared back onto another Florida highway.

    The sun rose as the view of the castle faded into the distance behind me, and I plodded along to finish the race back at Epcot.

    My time wasn’t so great. Running 20.5 of the 21.1 kilometers in a surgical mask didn’t do much for my endurance. Stopping for photos and dodging crowds and slowing down to video or record a bit of it here and there left my pace a little dodgy in the end. Neither the pace nor time was the point, anyhow. The point was the experience.

    And then it was over, and we flew home, safe and negative, and a few days later I was plodding along once again through icy streets with friends pondering the next year and wondering if maybe it had all been some kind of dream.

    Amazing. Crazy. Chaotic. Nostalgic. Insane.