Manchester tart

Two cooking experiments today, the Manchester tart, and the Cornish potato cake. The tart turned out pretty good, considering how complex it was. The potato cake, I botched. Go figure. Anyway, here's the recipe for the tart:

Ingredients

225g plain flour 

100g margarine 

25g sugar 

30ml cold water (approx.)  

Jar of jam 

1-3 bananas (depending on your preference) 

Custard 

Dessicated coconut (or grated chocolate - optional)

Handy Hint

Grated chocolate can be used instead of coconut but don't put it on while the custard is warm!

Method

For the pastry: 

1. Preheat oven to 190C (gas mark 5.) 

2. Mix flour and sugar, rub in fat. 

3. Mix with cold water using a knife to cut and stir to form a dough. 

4. Knead dough lightly on a floured surface. 

5. Roll out and put in a flan tin. 

6. Place a circle of greaseproof paper over the bottom of the tart and sprinkle a layer of rice or dried beans on top to prevent it rising (don't put it directly on the pastry!). 

7. Bake for 20 mins, remove the rice/beans and paper, return for 5 more minutes until crisp and golden. 

8. Allow to cool. 

For the Custard:

Ingredients:

4 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

1 Tbsp unbleached white flour

2 cup milk

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

grated rind of 1/2 lemon

Preparation:

This egg custard recipe makes approximately 2 cups of custard.

Separate the egg yolks. Place yolks and sugar in medium saucepan and lightly whisk together. Using a wooden spoon, continue stirring and add the flour. Set aside.In a medium sauce pan, pour the milk, vanilla extract and grated lemon rind. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Strain the hot milk mixture gradually into the pan with the egg and sugar mixture, stirring while you pour. Place the pan on stove and heat to a simmer, careful not to boil. Stir constantly for about 5 minutes.

Remove and allow to cool for a few minutes. As the custard cools, stir occasionally to prevent a skin from forming on top. Once cooled, chill in refrigerator until ready to use.

For the filling: 

9. Make up custard according to instructions but missing out some liquid to make it thick, leave to cool slightly. 

10. Dollop jam into the pastry case and spread around evenly. 

11. Slice bananas and arrange on top of jam. 

12. Pour partially cooled custard on top of the jam and bananas. 

13. Sprinkle dessicated coconut on top of custard if liked. 

14. Leave to set in fridge.

Duct Tape Rose

Home sick from work today. Decided to nap, read, and be a little crafty until this killer headache leaves me alone. Here's what I made:

That's right, ladies and gents, a fabulous duct tape rose. 

. . .to put in your hair!

Materials: 

Roll of duct tape

Two bobby pins. 

Instructions: 

I modified the instructions from http://www.instructables.com/id/Duct-Tape-Rose/. For basic instructions, go there. Below are my modifications:

1) I used a bobby pin instead of wire. I began wrapping the petals over the open end of the pin, leaving the closed end as a loop. 

2) I made my petals more sloppy, not always with an even point, often using jagged squares, which I felt lent greater authenticity to the "petal" shapes. You know, because roses are obviously silver.

3) I folded down some of the outer petals at the end

4) Finally, once the rose looked rose-ish enough, I used a thin strip of tape to wrap around the bottom edge of the petals, keeping them bent open, and around part of the hair pin.

5) THEN, I hooked the second hair pin through the loop of the first, which holds the rose in place in ur hairs. 

\o/ and now we all know why I don't make things very often. Happy Friday! 

Tahltan

File this under "new things I learned about today that I'm writing down in order to remember". Did some reading on the Tahltan aboriginals, a small tribe with their own dialect of Athabascan hailing from the Stikine River watershed in British Columbia.

Tahltan Yesterday

Tahltan Today

Reasons to like the Tahltan:

* Having your own language that hasn't completely died out when you're a tribe of only 2000 strong is no mean feat.

* They are made up of the Crow clan, and the Wolf clan (how cool is that)

* They are a matriarchal society (as many western tribes tend to be). Viva la matriarchy! 

* They were making tools from obsidian 10, 000 years ago. 

*They have been singlehandedly preventing the apocalypse since 2005 by guarding the roads leading to the headwaters of the Nass, Skeena, and Stikine rivers, which they view as the "sacred headwaters" from which all life originates. In all seriousness, the area is scouted as the spot for a coalbed methane mining project, which would greatly damage the environment in the area, so whether it means the apocalypse or no, it is good that *someone* is protecting this from happening. 

*They're musical! As you can see in the photo above, taken from here. Apparently, the area is known as "little Nashville" because everyone makes music in some way.

So, Tahltan. What's not to love? 

How well do you know Canada?

Because I was curious, I gathered aerial photographs of every province. Obviously, not all photos are representative of the whole province, but here is what I found. See if you can guess which ones are which. Highlight caption for answers!

New Brunswick

Alberta

British Columbia

Manitoba

North West Territories

Ontario

PEI

Saskatchewan

Yukon

Nova Scotia

Newfoundland Labrador

Nunavut

Quebec 

Anything Maslow can do I can do better . . .

. . . well no, not really. But its lunchtime, and I'm in a childishly optimistic sort of mood, so here is my own hierarchy of needs, or rather, the building blocks I think I need to become more like my "ideal self"

Like a video game, you need to achieve one level to get to the next. Incomplete levels (missing blocks) = unsteady structure. Right now, I'm still stuck on building up the foundational level. Lawd help me.

Sunshine girl

guess who!

Shakespeare in the Park

I had my first real theatre experience in Montreal last night. Sadly, I neglected to take pictures. I did take a picture of the program which I intended to post with this post, but sadly, I also neglected to recharge the battery after leaving the thing on for a couple hours the other day. Ooops.

So, my commentary will have to suffice, without any sort of visuals.

Shakespeare in the park is a tradition that happens in many parks all over the world. Happily, it is also a tradition in my own backyard park in Westmount, as I found out upon my return from Austin. On offer this year was The Taming of the Shrew, a play I've seen once, but had never read, so I will be unable to comment on the faithfulness to the script, though I do know they cleverly cut it short when it began to rain towards the end of the second half.

The stage was simple (as outdoor stages must be) but effective, and well lent to the humorous nature of the play, with a hole in the center of the stage frequently being used to garner laughs from the audience, and also as an effective portal for quick entries and exits. Props were minimal, but also put to good use. For those of you unfamiliar, Shrew is one of the comedies, which, of course, means everyone winds up married by the end. Spoilers! Not really.

The costumes were a bizarre, vibrant mix of time periods, which might best be described as a thrift store raid, ranging from a 1920's-esque smoking jacket, to the country home uniform of an English gentleman (tweed cap, scarf, macintosh) to a full on baby blue disco suit, worn by the incredibly lanky Petruchio (take a moment, and picture it please, baby blue disco pants on four and a half foot long freaking legs).

Casting was excellent, with actors being well physically matched to their characters (caricatures?). Hortensio, Bianca's long time suitor, who also happens to be something of a fool, was played by an adorably short redhead by the name of Stephen Joffe. This in contrast to Petruchio, Bianca's sister Kate's husband and "tamer", who was, as I said, absurdly tall, which perfectly matched the absurd, witty, over the top nature of the character. The actor, Alex McCooeye, definitely knew how to make good use of his lanky body to best comedic effect. Think Jack Skellington or Watanuki from XXXholic.  Kate, the shrew herself, was also well cast, a bundle of sex and sass (and the actress hailed from Saskatchewan!). The play also did a new take on the character of Bianca, which I appreciated. The "humble" "beautiful" maid was also something of a spoiled brat, and absolutely flip. Very much a stereotypical "baby of  the family". 

Although the play was almost painfully over the top at first, which made me a little uncomfortable, once I got into it, I found that the over-the-top-ness was actually incredibly well-suited to the Shakespearean comedy. The extravagance of the acting made the wordplay much easier to follow, and much more enjoyable. The extra "modern" jokes thrown in (like Hortensio strumming a broken ukulele and singing "O bianca, thou breakest my heart, thou shakest mine confidence daily" after the fashion of Simon and Garfunkel)  added to the essence of the Shakespearean play rather than took away from it. I felt like the actors had opportunity to put a lot of themselves and their own humor into the characters, and it came off very nicely. Petruchio's servant Curtis was especially well done in this regard.

 Too frequently, Shakespeare is taken too seriously, and we forget the nature of the audience he would initially have been catering to. These would have been the largely uneducated masses, who only came for a good laugh and a good time. This production of Taming of the Shrew truly got back to that essence of the Shakespearean comedy.

I would also like to applaud the actors, as they are currently halfway through an absolutely grueling  schedule of performances, beginning on July 19th and continuing through August 19th, with stagings occurring in parks all over Montreal. This is an incredibly high energy show, with women being tossed around like sacks of flour, dancing, singing, and a whole lot of screaming. Already the wear was starting to show a bit in their voices, so I wish them luck in powering through the next couple weeks of performances.

Overall, well done. I am hoping to start following the Repercussion Theatre company more closely, as I have been somewhat starved for theatre since coming to Montreal, and this has just served to whet rather than sate my appetite.