The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

I was really looking forward to making a Galette Des Rois this year. But as things go, I was so over fed with sweets and other rich holiday foods that when it actually came around to making one I no longer had it in me.  For those of you not familiar with the Galette des Rois, it’s a French three kings day cake made during the first week of January. It’s extremely simple to make: puff pastry, almond cream and a little creativity from the tip of your knife. There is a small plastic trinket or as the French call it “feve” that is often placed in the center of this cake for the kids and whoever receives it is king for a day.

The Galette Des Rois was a wonderful and extremely unanticipated adolescent food experiences for me. It came at a time when food couldn’t have been further from my mind. I was 15 and had just arrived in Paris, where I would be going to school for the following semester. I was extremely overwhelmed and in retrospect perhaps a bit too young to be so far away from home by myself for the first time. I was staying with this extremely off center family in a suburb of Paris. To just scratch the surface, the father lived in the garage and I’m pretty sure the mother was still breast feeding her 10 year old son. It was unlike any family dynamic I had ever encountered and I would be lying if I denied being totally dishearten by it.

I’ve been generally dissatisfied with the state of manufactured granola bars for some time now – I can’t say there is a single brand on the market that lives up to my expectations. While there are a few that are not too offensive, none of them give me everything I like in a granola bar.

What is it that I like you ask?

Well that changes from day to day, which is why it makes way more sense to make them myself. Generally though I like a low in sugar, high in dried fruit and nuts with either rolled oats or some variety of puffed wheat. I’m also one of those people who generally always has the makings of some kind granola bars on hand: nuts, dried fruit, rolled oats, honey, almond butter, chocolate chips, flax seed… you get the point.

Sometimes you really need a little dessert and just haven’t planned for it. You open your fridge desperately wishing you would find a bowl full of chocolate mousse or that last slice of left over apple pie you shoved all the way to the back in the hope of keeping it safe until it you needed it. But after staring into the depths of your fridge for 20 minutes you are forced to face the obnoxious reality that there is no chocolate mousse and that last slice of pie you thought was safe is now just a few crumbs on a plate.

This sort of situation is extremely common for me. It happens at least once a week day, yet knowing this I’m still not the type of person who keeps a stash of chocolate chip cookies in the pantry ready for the taking. So for the last week or so I have been getting creative with yogurt and whatever I can lay my hands on. We are big yogurt eaters and generally have a large supply of this amazing locally made yogurt in the fridge. There have been some failures I must admit, but on the whole if it involves some kind fruit you really can’t go wrong.

I don’t know what’s going on this year with those small mandarin oranges I love so much. They continue to disappointed me. I’m not talking about your garden-variety mandarin either. You know those mini ones that are the size of large grapes? I look forward to those every year and for some reason it’s looking like this is going to be a really bad season for them not to mention every other mandarin orange variety I have purchased since November in Vancouver.  It seems that no matter what variety I’ve come home with each week they are all sour and lacking in some way. I’m quite disappointed and have almost given up hope.

After a month of failed attempts, I recently decided to go in an entirely different direction with my orange consumption: navel oranges. While I don’t dislike these oranges, I was always a bit indifferent to them. They seemed too involved as a snack for work, considering I’m not the type to go and slice them up in the kitchen, not to mention that peeling a navel orange is tedious at best. But this weekend I found myself in my grocery store with a choice: give the navel orange another chance or become an apple eater. I went with the orange.

Does anyone else find eating an apple, by just biting into it, to be somewhat vulgar? I do eat and enjoy apples, I just don’t really like myself when I do. But that’s a story for another day…

There are certain things that are just so easy to make and I don’t make them often enough. What I love most about poached pears is that you can sort of improvise with what you have on hand, there are so many flavor combinations that would make a lovely poaching liquid, that the possibilities seem endless.

I’m a major spice hoarder and after going through a few of my hidden Indian spice stashes, I settled on chai inspired flavors. Star anise, cardamon, black cardamon, cinnamon, red chili pepper I have to say it was very spontaneous and sometimes its that spontaneity that makes things turn out extra good.