Who likes workshops?

I love workshops and so here are my latest workshops:


Join me and learn how to make delicious foods in The Spelt Bakery.

Café at The Spelt Bakery!!

I have always loved the idea of a café and now it's here!!! Check out our menu and new hours! Drop in and have a coffee from our Espresso machine made with organic fairtrade coffee from Café Etico.

Christine makes absolutely amazing food and you will love the signature sauce. We are now open Thursday to Sunday from 10 to 4. Join us for a bite to eat and watch for more things on the menu!!! Life is good!

A cold winter's night in Vancouver and a day off. Relaxing on the couch in front of the fireplace and yet again there is snow stuck to our patio table. Christmas is coming and the preparations are underway. I am knitting up a storm, planning the food and figuring out where to put the tree.

Vancouver is not usually this cold and the house was not made for these temperatures. So, curled up on the couch we are working on our new café menu. I actually love the cold crisp air and being next to the warm fire. However it's cold enough out there that all I want to do is roast and bake.

I still think turning the oven on is the best way to keep warm on a cold winter day. Not surprising that I became a Baker.

Christmas baking

When I was a kid, I use to do Christmas baking with my mom and even as an adult, we would often get together and do a bunch of baking and have it all ready for the holiday season. This year, we are inviting our customers to do Christmas baking with me. I am so looking forward to it. Attached is the poster for our Christmas baking workshop.

French bread

As someone who reacts to wheat and being the spelt baker, every time I travel I take my flour and ingredients with me to make spelt bread.

In 2008, Christine and I went to France. I took our organic spelt flour from the bakery as well as a few other key ingredients to make bread while we were away. As much as I love eating all sorts of other foods. 2 weeks without bread is just too long for me and so usually when I travel I bake bread. Maybe it's just loving baking as much as I do, I can't quite imagine spending two weeks without making a loaf or 600.

When we were in the North of France staying with Christine's family, I baked a large loaf of bread in the convection oven at her parents place in the photo above. I made a sponge one day with yeast and then made the bread in a similar way to Janet's Country Bread that we sell at the Spelt Bakery. And yes, that bread is named after me.

I was so amazed by the flavour and texture of the bread. It was different than what I usually have in Vancouver, but it was exactly the same ingredients EXCEPT for the water. Finally I figured it out. The reason that bread is different in France compared to North America is the water. It was the only difference.


Having made bread for as many years as I have, I can tell by texture what a dough should be like to make a good loaf of bread. At the most recent workshop on bread and buns, I was able to show people the texture that the dough should be and everyone was amazed at the height of their bread. I also showed them how to correct a dough if it is too stiff or too soft.

I made a beautiful dough in France, soft and pliable. I baked it the way I would here in Vancouver and I ended up with a loaf of bread with a nice hard chewy crust and a porous crumb on the inside. The picture above was the loaf that I ended up with.

That was a fantastic trip of a lifetime, family, adventure and a great loaf of bread.
That is what I call living the high life.

Halloween

I love Halloween! From when I was a kid to now. Throughout the years with my kids, making costumes, decorating the front yard. Getting and giving out candy. I love Halloween.

First Workshop.

As many of you know, I love baking! I also love to talk about what I am passionate about and I love to teach. I have always felt incredibly lucky to have the quality and kind of customers that the bakery seems to attract. Sunday afternoon was a prime example of that.

There were six participants for the pizza, foccacia and pita workshop. The energy of the six women who spent Sunday afternoon with me was delightful. I am often amazed at how I have gotten to know so many of the customers over the last twelve years. One of our customers has told us that we are like family and that is exactly how I felt on Sunday afternoon, like I had family over to spend the afternoon baking with me and they all wanted to learn the same thing.

Really we did orchestrate the whole event and at the same time, having it turn out to be such an enjoyable experience as the teacher made my day. Christine and I had gone out the night before to our first halloween party of the season and then got up about five hours after going to bed to bake and teach the workshop.

As Christine said the workshop was a great way to end a fantastic week. I am a lucky woman indeed to be able to do what I love and be able to teach people what I can do.

Next weekend is the pasta workshop and I LOVE RAVIOLI!!!!

My favourite stuffing!

One year I was making the stuffing for a big family Turkey Dinner and amongst the many special diets was my vegetarian son and my mother who asked me to make the stuffing with just some poultry seasoning. I asked her if she meant that powdered stuff that comes in a glass jar?

It was the first year that Christine and I were together. A Chef and A Baker and we were doing the Turkey dinner. There was going to be no poultry seasoning in my stuffing, however, I knew what my mom meant. Don't put fancy things in, no sausage and nothing that might cause reactions for her or her wife, my other mother. So, I decided to go with a nice clean and simple stuffing made with fresh and good quality ingredients... so here is the recipe:

1 onion
1/4 cup of olive oil
1 or 2 loaves of spelt french bread, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 package of fresh sage, chopped, approximately 1 ounce or 28 grams
1/2 package of fresh thyme, pulled of the branch and crushed between your fingers. Save the other half of the package for decoration.
1 963 ml container of organic vegetable broth.
1/2 cup white wine.

Sautee the onion in the olive oil over medium heat until slightly golden on the edges. Add bread crumbs, prepared sage and thyme and stir, slowly pour in half of the vegetable broth stirring constantly and then the wine, the second half of the vegetable broth until bread has all become moist. If the stuffing is too wet, add more bread cubes. Place finished stuffing inside Turkey or chicken and roast.

For vegetarian stuffing, grease an oven safe pan and place stuffing in pan. drizzle approximately 1/4 cup of olive oil over the top of the stuffing and bake in the oven at 350F for approximately 1 hour. Serve in pan with sprigs of fresh thyme on top.

This is now my favourite stuffing and is incredible with cranberry sauce.

Happy eating!

Spelt Tortillas

Spelt Tortillas

4 cups organic white Spelt flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon oil
1 1/4 cup water.

mix together all ingredients and knead by hand for about ten minutes. Weigh out into 60 gram balls and with a rolling pin, roll to a ten inch round.

Bake at 450 degrees for 3 to 5 minutes until tortilla is baked through. Use immediately for making burritos, Quesadiilas, whatever you want.

You can also cook them on a large cast iron skillet on the stove top. Frying on both sides, a couple minutes each side.

Please tell me your suggestions of what you would make with them.

I Love SPELT!

Pasta, pasta, PASTA!!!

I have a passion for pasta. Maybe it comes fromt the fact that I stopped eating pasta when I was young because of my wheat intolerance. Maybe it is because in Vancouver we have so many different types of pasta and GOOD Pasta. There are the Chinese noodles, the Italian noodles. Greek pasta dishes, Thai pasta salads, Japanese Udon, and then there are the stuffed pastas; ravioli, pyrogies, egg rolls.

Today I saw these machines that will make the pasta and now I am thinking about all the fun I could have making pasta and lucky for all the customers we have at the bakery, I KNOW I will make way too much for just us. So there are four different attachments, one for lasagna, one for rigatoni, one for spaghetti and one for fettucine. We can do spinach pasta, beet pasta, add herbs and spices. All sorts.

There is also a machine for ravioli and you can make different sizes. However, since the first machine will make lasagna, I can use it to roll the sheets out and then hand make the stuffed pasta. Now to decide what to stuff it with!!!

I love pasta!

I love to teach!

I am so excited about the new workshops that we are going to have at the Bakery. I have actually been showing people how to bake with Spelt for years and now I will be doing it when that is all I have to do. Check it out!!

Grief!

A subject that often arises for all of us, Spelties or not. Loss comes in so many different ways. Whether it is a member of our family, a close friend, a beloved pet, a business, a job, a child, a parent, a sibling, a partner, a loss of yourself, or your dreams. Even when it is not directly one of those for us, sometimes it is for someone we care about. Grief comes in many different ways and each person will react differently.

My grandmother died almost a year ago. She was the last of her generation in my immediate family. I became a grandmother four months later. Sometimes loss can also come in feeling like you are losing a sense of yourself. Regardless of why you are grieving, there are some basics about grief.

There are different degrees to how you will feel the grief depending on many different things. You need to grieve your way and you will need support from those around you. How each person feels support is different. I remember when my first daughter was stillborn and I was looking after a few children ages 7 to 9. One nine year old girl asked me why I talked about my stillborn daughter. I thought and answered quite quickly. My explanation to her was that when someone close to you dies, the grief is too big for you to deal with alone. So by talking about the person you share some of your grief. It is kind of like grief is a big ball and each time you talk about your loss you pass a little piece of that ball on to someone else. They are able to take that little piece and move on, helping you with your grief. I also told her that it was why grief often takes at least a year.

The other part of it is that in that year, you will find yourself doing things that you did the year before your loss and how you perceive those things is quite different. It either brings back memories or makes you think about how it would be had you not lost what was so precious to you.

There are many people in my life who have been touched by grief this past year and I am sure there are many more. My thoughts are often with them. Grief has also touched my life in the past year and for me, it brings to the forefront to be grateful for those in my life still.

Grief is not something you get over, it is something you can get through and I will go through it again and again because I care and I feel grateful that I am able to.

Dinner parties!

I love Dinner Parties. When we plan a dinner party, we discuss the menu, usually in the car on the way to the bakery and try and figure out what we will have for our dinner. We each have our specialities, I cook Indian style curries, English food, most of the baked products and almost all the desserts. Christine does Thai style curries, barbeque and pasta dishes. We both love to look at our latest issue of Bon Appetit and see what other ideas we can come up with. In fact I have issues of Bon Appetit from the 80's and all of at least the last ten years.

So, with the menu plan written down and in hand the next step is which dishes to use. What are we going to have with it. We like fusion, but there has to be some compatibility in flavours and in the tast of the people attending. It is definitely easier to feed one or two people than a crowd. Having someone over who has allergies actually makes me feel more excited than someone who can eat anything. I think one of the reasons why I ended up starting the Spelt Bakery was because I so enjoyed the challenge of feeding someone who thought that they were too much trouble with their big list of things they could not eat. While it is a challenge it is one I thrive on.

Christine and I have an e-mail list to send to people who invite us over. I have to say that the first time Christine invited me for dinner, she got my list and accommodated it beautifully. I was so impressed and then I got her list and understood that with her culinary expertise, a list like mine was not that big a deal. In fact she was more like me in that she was able to see a list of "Foods Not For Me!" and create a menu to fit. I have to say that as a baker, marrying a chef is so perfect!

September!!!

Have you ever noticed how busy it feels at the beginning of September? The craziness of getting in the last good long weekend camping trip, the rush to buy all the school supplies and back to school clothes. It starts to get cooler and all of a sudden the mad dash to get all the food we need, the clothes and the rest of what we need to make it through a cold winter. Sometimes I think that we just have some typical actions that come from when we used to need to store food through the winter and stay in our caves/cabins/homes for several months each year.

I have always behaved this way and each September I start to make food. It's a good thing that I own a bakery, because without it, I would not know enough people for all the food that I make. This year we are working on frozen pizzas and it actually took about 6 hours to do all the prep work. Tomorrow we make the pizzas and then we can see how many we get. It's quite exciting really. I have always loved insta-food, however I hate to sacrifice quality and taste for convenience. I am addicted to these new pizzas and I am so thrilled to be able to just take them from the freezer and put them straight in the oven. I am now after enough summer heat, looking forward to the cool fall air and the start of sitting in front of the fire with a nice thick stew and a hot toddy.

Even though we don't often get alot of snow here in Vancouver, The seasons are still distinctive and fun in their own ways. So take a deep breath and enjoy the transition between summer and fall, the labour day holiday weekend that starts off another beautiful season.

Late Summer Evenings!

15 years ago when I was a young mother of two, I bought a house in East Vancouver. I remember calling up my family realtor, Sandy Riley and telling her that I wanted to buy a house in between Nanaimo and Clark, and Hastings and Broadway. She told me that she would call me in about six months. She did, we looked at three houses in a week and I put an offer on the first house we looked at. Three offers were put on the house and we got it!!!

15 years later, I still absolutely love this house and this is a photo of Christine and I on the back porch with the beautiful sky behind us. We love to spend time in the late summer with friends and family on the back porch and it is so nice to watch the sunset and enjoy the light summer breeze. Nowadays we have that cool breeze with the smell of autumn in the air. Time to organize and move forward. Kind of like the movie chocolat, go where the wind blows you. For me that is more of a metaphor than getting up and leaving town. I'm staying in this house and still going where the wind takes me. I am creative when I feel this way and the things I like to create most is foods. Watch for the latest ideas here, on facebook and at the bakery.

Life is good when you're growing and moving forward.

Spelt Ravioli!

We made Spelt Ravioli and IT WORKED!!! I have made pasta out of spelt flour several times before but have always had trouble making the stuffed pasta. So after reading a few different sets of instructions on how to make stuffed pasta I figured out how to do it and do it well. I even taught my thirteen year old daughter how to make her own.

We had ours stuffed with a combination of ricotta, spinach, gorgonzola and fresh basil from our garden. Christine made this beautiful sauce with onions, carrots and garlic sauteed in olive oil and then tomatoes. It was a beautiful chunky delicious sauce full of flavour.

My daughter, Boedicea, made her own filling with spelt bread crumbs, an egg, shredded cheddar cheese and bacon. She even stuffed her own ravioli and she thought they would fall apart when they were cooked. They didn't! She ended up with a pot full of amazingly delicious, big, beautiful ravioli.

It wa so much fun making the raviloi that now I want to do a workshop on it.

A Baker in the Making!

When I was a teenager, I hiked the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island twice. The first time was with my highschool and the second time was with a neighbourhood house (like a community centre)in Vancouver.

On my second hike, a friend of mine was having her birthday and I decided before I left to make a cake mix and an icing mix where all I had to do was add water to be able to make her a cake for her Birthday. I had researched how to bake without an oven and what tools you could use to create an oven with an open fire. There was the aluminum foil method, but if it was windy at all, it could cause problems. Then there was the pot inside pot method, but if you put it directly on the fire, you needed something to stop the bottom from burning. I don't remember now what else I read, but I do remember what I did.

We got to Tsusiat Falls and that was the evening of my friends birthday. We set up camp, had a big fire on the beach and started making dinner. There were good sized rocks all around and ones that had been put on the edge of a fire pit that seemed to live at Tsusiat Falls. I took the mix I had made at home, added water and placed the cake batter in a small greased pot from my camping cookware. I had this fantastic set of cookware that all fit inside each other. I took the largest of the pots and lined it with rocks, being careful to choose rocks that had already been at the fire pit as I did not want any of them to explode. I put my cake pot on top of the rocks in the larger pot and then put the lid on the large pot. This was placed over the fire. I don't remember how long it took to bake, but it kind of steamed/baked like a traditional english steamed pudding. I took it out when it was fully baked and added water to my icing, covered the cake, put a candle on top and presented it to my friend. Everyone wanted to know where I "found" this cake and I told them I made it. Even then baking and feeding people was a passion for me. Everyone was amazed and I have to say after 4 days of hiking it was delicious.

Girls Rock Camp Vancouver!!!

My daughter attended Girls Rock Camp this summer and she LOVED it! This is an absolutely amazing week long camp where the girls form a band and write a song and then perform it in front of an audience.

I have often thought that I was incredibly lucky to have the kind of programs available to me when I was young that helped me learn skills that I would never have learned in a conventional school or even at home. I was also lucky to have gone through an alternative school program and to have gone on many trips learning how to canoe, rock climb and bake without an oven.

When I was in Carnarvon Elementary School in Vancouver, I learned how to plan a menu, budget the money and shop for all the groceries I needed for a 5 day camping trip. I still use those skills to this day.

In highschool, I learned how to carry my food, shelter and clothing for a week and what types of foods were going to be the lightest with the most nutrients to keep me going on the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. Too bad I didn't have any Breakfast Cookies back then.

Through different neighbourhood houses and organizations I learned many things that I have since used in my life and am grateful for all the volunteers and paid workers that helped me learn about my environment, the food I eat and the people around me.
I have often said that I should have known that I would end up being a Baker when I baked a cake on the West Coast Trail when I was 15 years old.

For more information on Girls Rock Camp Vancouver check out their website: http://girlsrockcampvancouver.ca/grcv/

Picnics in the heat!

When it gets too hot it is very hard to cook or eat and I just want to find a nice shady spot on the water. So that is the time for picnics at places like Cates Park, Deep Cove or Jericho Beach.

At this time of year, because of the incredible fruits available, we went and picked up okanagan cherries nectarines, plums and peaches. We went to Ugo and Joe's for this beautiful creamy macedonian feta, a bulgarian sheep feta and some camembert. Then to Coiffi's for a couple of semi-hard goat and sheep cheeses to round out our platters for a picnic at the beach. We grabbed a small pack of tomatoes, sparkling grapefruit juice, a watermelon, avocado and some hummous, can of artichokes and an artichoke dip. With our homemade fruit and nut crisps, a loaf of sprouted spelt bread, chips, a box of almond thins and of course our sinful spelt double chocolate chip cookies, we headed to Cates Park. We drove over in just about fifteen to twenty minutes and then chose a spot on the grass by the beach and put our blanket down.

There is nothing quite like sitting on a blanket just off the water and digging into a bunch of fresh food. After a long hot day, I don't want to cook. So I want fast food. Good fast food - nice spelt bread, cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables. If you wash everything when you buy it, it's ready to go when you are tired and hot.

Now we have the equipment packed in the van ready to go. So if you see the Spelt Mobile crossing the second narrows, we are heading to Cates Park and if the canoe is on top, we are headed for Deep Cove.

There are ways to enjoy the heat.

Friday the 13th

This has to be one of may favourite days. Wonderful things happen for me on Friday the 13th.

On Friday, April 13th, 2007, Christine gave me 13 red roses from The Flower Box (www.theflowerbox.ca) and asked me to be her partner for the first time. This is an example of their floral arrangements.

On Friday, November 13th, 2009, My daughter Boedicea turned thirteen.

Today at the Bakery everything went very smoothly, we finished our prep for our Saturday sales and got to leave the Bakery early.

Now we are at home trying these new nitrate/nitrite free hot dogs that we found at Whole Foods with our big beautiful hot dog buns. I wish I had a Spelt beer from Firefly Fine Wine and Ales (www.fireflyfinewinesandales.com) but not today. Probably better as it needs to be shared with a friend and we will be at the bakery working tomorrow

Enjoy your weekend.

Spelt Pastry!

Finally a recipe on the Spelt Baker's Blog! I am sure that you are all expecting me to post a recipe once in a while and here is the first one. Why Pastry? because someone wrote on The Spelt Bakery Facebook Page that they wanted savoury pies and we do not have the proper license to make and sell them. So here is the recipe so that you can make it at home and fill it with whatever you want.

Spelt Pastry from Basic Spelt Cookbook by Janet Féirín

1 lb. (454 grams) of Shortening (I use Earth Balance Shortening that I buy at Donald's Market in Vancouver)
4 cups of white spelt flour (I use Organic Meadow, but have also used la Milanaise and Saugeen flours, make sure it's white!)
1 tablespoon of organic cane sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon of vinegar (if you can't have vinegar, replace it with lemon juice)
water

Blend flour sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl.
Use a knife, fork or pastry cutter to cut up the shortening into the flour mixture.
When the flour mixture looks like crumbs, make a well in the middle.
Beat the egg in a measuring cup with a 1 cup mark.
Add the vinegar or lemon juice and enough warm water to equal 1 cup of liquid.
Pour into well in flour mixture.
With your hands, squeeze liquid into mixture until a nice firm dough has formed. Be careful not to knead as this will make the pastry heavy.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Use for quiche, savoury pies, sausage rolls, etc.

I used to make a smoked salmon asparagus quiche with coconut milk for those who could not have cow's milk. There are also several options for vegetarian pot pies and meat pies.

I would love to hear your ideas for savoury pies! My favourite is chicken pot pie and I have always said that the reason mine is so good is because I start with a chicken.

Will I make you hungry?

Be prepared to salivate at various times reading this blog. It has been said about me that my love of food is only surpassed by my desire to feed people.

Not that type of grandmotherly, "You don't eat enough... HAVE MORE!" feeding people. More like a " wanna try this new dish I made? I... " and then follows the description of all the different ingredients that I used and how I put them all together and what I serve it with and then you are hungry.

Yes, I will probably make you hungry and if I don't you should go see a doctor, naturopath, psychiatrist, therapist or homeopath. There could be something wrong with you.

Food should be enjoyed. We all need to eat, why not make it fun, exciting and precious. The picture above is when we went to Feast of Fields last year and those are little pieces of fudgy chocolate cake (recipe is in my cookbook, Basic Spelt) with soft goat cheese icing and raspberry coulis on top. Delicious and adorable. We also made a pesto and served it with goat cheese and fresh tomato on my Country bread which is available by special order from the bakery.

So salivate away, make yourself a good dinner and remember goat's brie is lower in fat than cow's brie.

Photo of our booth.

What a fabulous Pride Day we had. Christine and I were up at 5:30 to get everything ready and loaded in the van to be able to get down to Sunset Beach at 7:45am. It is amazing how quick it is to drive downtown on a Sunday morning before the world has woken up.

We got everything set up and we were dressed in our costumes and ready to go by 11am. People came by all day and I almost lost my voice.

We were planning on going out for dinner after taking down everything and going back home to clean up and get ready to go out, but we were way too tired. It was so much fun and we really enjoyed ourselves. Check out the faeries.

Pride Recovery

How long does it take a Spelt Baker to recover from Pride Weekend? We will have to see when the next post is....

Vancouver Pride

Happy Pride!!!

Today is the day that thousands will head downtown for the Vancouver Pride Parade. Last year, my daughter, Boedicea led the way for the Vancouver Queer Film Festival float and our friend Melanie is beside her dressed all in white with a black belt in this photo. They won an award for their float and Christine and I watched the parade with my parents (Christine Waymark and Robin Rennie of Dragonstone Counselling in Vancouver, BC) because we all wanted to see Boedicea head the Queer Film Festival float.

In 2007, all five of us, three generations participated in the parade. This year you will find us on sunset beach selling spelt goodies right by the stage.

I hope that you have a fabulous day and that no matter who you are, who you love, how you love... that you are proud to be.

Our beautiful backyard

This year we planted a garden in our backyard.

It's kind of funny that last year in the same section, we planted grass. Before that there was just a big pile of dirt in that section of our yard. We made three levels of beautiful lawn going down to the edge of the garage for our wedding on June 21st, 2009. Christine and I have now been married for just over a year and on our first anniversary, Horizon Distributors launched our Breakfast Cookie as a new product. It was a very exciting day for us and we celebrated by going to Vij's for dinner.

Anyway back to the garden. Our tenants, Jeff and Flo have helped enormously. We already had raspberries, black currants and saskatoon berries along the side of the fence and a cherry tree out front. Now we also have lettuce, carrots, beets (my favourite are golden beets), potatoes, leeks (for my goat cheese, leek and onion tart) tomatoes of all different size, radishes, endives, peppers, squash, eggplants, herbs and an artichoke for Christine. There is only one artichoke and maybe next year there will be more. I was so excited to find the seeds that I had to try it out and it is actually growing but apparently it is alot like asparagus. It takes a long time to get food out of it.

For quick eating gardens, I think lettuce is pretty good. I planted a seed mix and the red and green romaine that is coming out of it is gorgeous. We have been eating caesar salads with our own homemade dressing and it is amazing. We bought a chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano and are slicing it and putting thin slices of cheese in the salad with a traditional dressing with anchovies, egg, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil. If you do not eat cows milk cheeses, there are some beautiful sheep milk cheeses that are similar, like Pecorino Romano which is what we usually get for pasta dishes.

I hope you like the picture of our beautiful Garden.

Come celebrate your pride with us!

We will be at Sunset beach on the Sunday, August 1st for the Vancouver Pride Parade!!

Christine and I spent the day working on our outfits, so come by our booth to get yourself a breakfast cookie and to see what we came up with to wear to celebrate the Vancouver Pride Festival.

450 degrees

Making puff dough out of Spelt flour is one of those things that I have done many times in the past and at the previous location of the bakery (The Spelt Bakery) we used it for making cherry pinwheels and fruit filled pastries. Then I met Christine and she made this fabulous savoury strudel with my puff dough.

However, the last time we tried to make cherry pinwheels, they failed miserably. We baked them in our convection oven at the bakery at 375 degrees and the puff dough did not puff. So on Saturday night I decided to try puff dough again.

I took some little squares of puff dough that I had in the freezer at the bakery and brought them home. I folded the edges over to make a little edge and then brushed all the edges with egg wash.

Meanwhile I sautée two large leeks and a red onion in a bit of olive oil in one of my favourite cast iron frying pans. I added a touch of a rosemary/raspberry sea salt and cooked the leeks and onion until soft with a little bit of a brown edge.

With a fork, I divided the leek onion mixture between my seven little puff squares and crumbled a soft goat cheese on top. I then put some fresh ground black pepper on top and baked all of them at 450 degrees in the oven and THEY PUFFED!!!

The recipe for spelt puff dough is in my cookbook, Basic Spelt, available from the bakery.

I was so excited that I kept smiling and laughing little happy laughs. For those of you who have not met me, I like to smile and laugh like a five month old watching the dogs. (That's a reference to my granddaughter, Lilja) I like to get excited by the small things in life, like a good meal and the success of my puff dough.

Quite frankly, there are enough of all those small things to make life quite enjoyable.

I hope you like the picture of my puffy little goat cheese, leek and onion tarts. They were delicious with our tapas dinner of skewered prawns, tomatoes and red onions on the bbq and chicken wings with Christine's honey mustard sauce.

Success at 450!!

My First Post

This is my first blog and you may or may not find it interesting. I will write about whatever I want and alot of times it will probably be about food.

I love family, food and adventure. I love to feed people and I love to write, talk, discuss and hear about food.

Please feel free to take my ideas about food and recreate them at home. Eating well is so much fun.