I Love My Mother-in-Law

As you might have guessed by the title of this post, here's R's guest post about his experience preparing for the wedding. I warned R that he may not be "preaching to the choir" here. But, I'll let you come to your own conclusions.

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Psychgrad and Giz seem to thrive when the kitchen is overflowing with open cookbooks, dirty dishes, and ridiculous amounts of food. I, on the hand, find it draining. In fact, I am still recovering from the wedding preparations. This posting will expose the dark side of the Equal Opportunity Kitchen and shine a light on the signs of an addiction to cooking.

Most of my family members and friends were scheduled to arrive in town a few days before the wedding. Luckily, I had booked off a couple days in advance of their arrivals in order to run a few errands and do a bit of cleaning so that I could spend time with them once they arrived. Much to my dismay, the place was a disaster. There were cookies everywhere. There was flour on the floor. There were stacks of dirty dishes filling the sink. At times, I couldn’t even see the kitchen counter surface because there was so much stuff on top of it. The mess overflowed into the kitchen and even into the office as we needed more storage space. I tried to clean the place, but it was a losing battle. It just kept getting worse and worse. How on earth could I explain to my family and friends that they couldn’t come over, because the place was too dirty? Below are a couple of photos that show what the place looked like.





One day I came home and Psychgrad and Giz seemed really overwhelmed. A bunch of people were coming over for supper the next day and we had a lot of food left to prepare. I jumped into the role of Project Manager and tried to motivate Giz by telling her to work faster, but to no avail. An important part of Project Management is understanding the “Scope Triangle” and that time, cost and quality are the trade-offs inherent in every project.


I couldn’t get Giz to work faster and we couldn’t postpone the event, so I couldn’t change the time aspect. Giz wasn’t open to ordering a pizza or anything else and I couldn’t pay anyone enough to squeeze into the disaster of a kitchen to help out, so I couldn’t change the cost aspect. The quality aspect was going to suffer. It was clear that we needed to change the scope. We needed to eliminate a few options from the menu. However, when I suggested to Giz that we don’t make everything as planned, she replied, “what are you getting at?” She couldn’t fathom the idea of hosting an event and not having an insane amount of food. This was a moment of clarity for me. I realized that Giz has an addiction to cooking and she needs help. Here’s the proof:
• Instead of reading regular books, she reads cookbooks.
• Instead of watching real television shows, she watches cooking shows.
• Instead of checking normal web sites, she checks out food blogs.
• She asked me to go to the grocery store at least twice each day.
• She is so out of touch with the real world, she hasn’t even heard of Usain Bolt. He was only named Sportsman of the Year!!!

We need to have an intervention to save her. Who is willing to help? Please post messages of encouragement. Together, we can help her beat this addiction to cooking!

Chick Pea Salad

Don't you get tired of the same old standby salad? In keeping with the eating healthy theme and offering some new ideas for the everyday table I chose to throw together (and I'm not kidding - it's so quick and easy - a total throw together) a chick pea salad that's packed with great fiber and veggies and very lightly dressed. It so makes for a clean tasting yet yummy salad.


Ingredients

2 cups dried (or canned) chickpeas
1/2 large red onion, diced
1/2 large red pepper, diced
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/3 cup carrots, diced or shredded
6 Tbsp olive oil
6 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp. cumin (or more if you like)
1 tsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper


Method:

1. Soak dry chickpeas in water overnight
2. Drain and rinse well. Cook on medium for approximately 30 minutes. Set aside.
3. Dice vegetables, add to cooled chick peas
4. Mix in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, curry and cumin (to taste)

Wedding Story: Part 3

Warning: R's Equal Opportunity Kitchen Exposed post is in progress. He has been spending way too much time in the office writing this thing. Giz...be afraid. Be very afraid.

But first, I bring you the 3rd installment of The Wedding Story...

With the first full day of events impending, Giz and I headed to the Byward Market to stock up on supplies. We had about an hour to get a lot done. So, I was literally dragging Giz from place to place telling her to put the camera down and get a move on.

She did manage to sneak in a few shots.

Unlike the Farmer's Market, the stands at the Byward Market contain a lot of produce that is not local. This has led to quite a debate, locally. Including a petition. Last year, the addition of a colour-coding system was added to inform customers of the distance the produce has travelled to get to the market.
Red means Canadian.
Blue means imported.
Green means from within 100 kilometres of Ottawa.
Yellow means organic produce from anywhere.

There are still some problems with this system as the stickers are not always prominently displayed, produce from different regions are often sold in the same basket and there is the occasional mislabelling.

One of the main benefits of the market is that there are a bunch of small stores in the area that are there year round (even when the stands close for the winter).

There are two cheese stores very close to each other (I get the names confused). They're both good. I think the one we went to was The House of Cheese. Or, maybe it was International Cheese & Deli.




One of the best reasons to go to the market is to visit La Bottega, a store specializing in Italian food.


At this point, we were beyond late and I was stressing. So, Giz was very restricted in her picture taking. We picked up the remainder of what we needed and returned to the apartment to get the "day before" preparations under way.


Thankfully, I had a barrage of help Saturday morning to get everything done. Life is so much easier when other people do your work for you. I miss my entourage (sniff sniff).

Here are some shots from Saturday dinner (some are blurry -- there was just too much going on at once to take good shots).

Cheese Platter


Included a mix of cheddar, brie, smoked gouda, havarti and cranberry goat's cheese.

Orzo Caprese Salad (Melissa - you know I'm obsessed with this stuff)


I made the pesto without pine nuts because one of the guests is deathly allergic to nuts (slight challenge).

Lemon-Dill Salmon


Not the most beautiful dish in the world -- but it was a big hit and super easy to make. We marinaded the salmon for 30 minutes with olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt and pepper. HUGE HIT.

Here you can also see a bit of the green salad we served along with the baguette (some fresh, some made into crostini). Guests had an option of bruschetta or portabello tapinade.


Also a favourite, here's the spanikopita (easy to make ahead of time, freeze and warm up). You can also see Giz's towel cake in the background.

Chicken Skewers (sorry, kind of blurry) -- the platter was a gift from R's mom.

Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake

Icing

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups icing sugar
4-6 tbsp water

Make sure shortening and butter are at room temp. Mix them together to smooth out, add vanilla, then icing sugar (a little bit at a time to avoid a counter disaster). Add water as needed (depending on desired consistency).

This 3-tier stand was a wedding gift (from Giz, of course). The top layer is some leftover banana loaf and the other layers are the famous Blueberry Crumble Bars that everyone was making last year. I used a mix of blueberries and a saskatoon berries to make them.