Because this is still a big story... 'story' being the operative word...

Winter by the Bow River, Close up

'Kay, I don't know what these are. All I know is that they're small - very small; about 1cm in diameter or so. They grow all over the place beside the river and I'm sure they're green or something in summer. But now they're just dusted with very fine frost.


Same with these: They're prairie grasses of some distinction but, I'm a photographer, not a botanist so anyone who's reading this and knows what these grass are can please contribute names.

Thanks.

Les Pets de Soeurs

These are a very commonly eaten amuse gueule in Quebec. They can be made with puff pastry and other sweet, store-bought pastries but they're usually made with left over pie dough.

I had to laugh at the description on About.com for this photo; it's called 'Canadian Fart Recipe 1.'.... We have more than one fart recipe?? Who knew?

If you want a pie dough recipe, scroll down to the previous post for Tarte a l'onion.

These are the simplest things to make. Just roll out the pie dough to 1/4" thickness. Slather with BUTTER - yes, butter. Don't deprive yourself. Everyone knows French women don't get fat...

Sprinkle liberally with brown sugar, cinnamon and a couple pinches of ground cloves. I dust very, very gently with salt because it enhances the sweet.

Roll the dough tightly into a log. Seal the open end with a bit of water or egg white if you have some sitting around... Ok. water...

Slice into 1/2 inch wheels. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 10 minutes at 350 F.

Eat when warm - careful, the sugar is HOT when it comes out of the oven. Yummy with milk. Or wine. Or beer. But, as they're nun's farts and all, maybe milk is the most pure...

Tarte a l'onion style Alsace

OK. I looked at a lot of recipes for this pie and I have come to the conclusion that this is a family recipe, meaning each family makes it their own way. This is MY way. There's no right/wrong, Gordon Ramsay be damned and yes, I WOULD win against him!

Here's what you'll need:

4 - 5 large onions - 2.5 lbs
1/2 package sliced, fatty bacon
Fresh Thyme leaves
18% cream or 33% if you want
2 large eggs
1 bottle of dark beer - any beer will do but dark is nice
Ground nutmeg
Ground cloves
1c grated Gruyère cheese
Pastry for pie shell
fluted pie plate - or your basic 12" pie plate.

Crust.
2 sifted cups unbleached flour
1/3 cup COLD lard or butter. NO, not margarine. It doesn't work.
1/8th tsp Creme of Tartar and NO do not skip this
1/8th tsp salt
1 egg yolk
1/4c ice water

Now do exactly what I say.

Sift the dry ingredients together
cut the lard/butter into smallish chunks, into the flour

Get your hands in there and start squishing the butter into the flour, rubbing the mixture with your fingers. Do this quickly so the butter doesn't warm up any more than it has to. It's right when it looks like really coarse oatmeal.

Mix the egg yolk into the water
Pour 1/2 the water into the dry ingredient

With a fork, stir the mixture up. Add 1/2 the remaining water and mix again with the fork. Scrumple the mix up with two hands. If it feels like it could be rolled out without breaking apart, it's done. If it needs a bit more water, add a BIT more. Once you can scrumple it into a ball, stick it in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge.

Now.
Heat a deep saucepan or dutch oven over medium high heat
Cut up that bacon across the strips into 1/2 inch pieces and then layer it into the bottom of your pan

Cut onions in half top to bottom and then into half rings. Doing it this way saves your fingers (because you're going to lay the flat side of the onions down before you slice 'em) and gives you nice rings.

Throw the onions in with the bacon, which should have begun to brown. Stir well to coat the onions with bacon fat; reduce the heat to just under medium. Stir occasionally as the onions cook down.

When the onions begin to be transparent, add a pinch of nutmeg and pinch of cloves; couple pinches salt and ground pepper. You can adjust these seasonings again later.

The onions will take almost an hour to caramelise over medium heat, so get a glass of wine and a book. Do not let the onions burn or stick. Turn the heat down if they begin to crisp. Meanwhile, open that beer, pour 1 cup into the onions and drink the rest. Turn the heat down a bit more, slap on a lid and drink 1/2 your glass of wine. Stir the pot occasionally.

The onions will turn a very gorgeous caramel colour. There will be liquid now, so take the lid off, turn the heat up slightly and let the liquid cook down.

While the liquid is cooking off, roll out your dough to a scant 1/4 inch thick circle (on a slightly floured board with a slightly floured rolling pin (an empty wine bottle works great too so get drinkin')

Place the pastry into the pie plate. The easy way is to roll the pastry over the rolling pin/wine bottle and then unroll it over the plate.

Pat the pastry nicely into the shell and then pinch the edges around the pie plate. Cut away the excess and save... you'll have lots of extra and I'm going to tell you next how to make Les Pettes de Soeur...

Now. Get a sieve over a large bowl and dump the onions into it - drain off the extra liquid.. just let it sit there for a spell. Pour the juices into a sealable container and then dump the onions into the bowl. Stick 'em in the fridge for 10 minutes to cool

Beat 1/2c cream with two eggs. Get the onions and mix the milk and eggs and 3/4c of the cheese into them. Then dump the whole lot into your nice pie shell. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.

Bake at 375F for 40 minutes - and keep an eye on your pie crust... don't want it to burn. If it looks done in 35 minutes, take the pie out.

Serve with a salad. This serves six people easily.

Crazy Canucks Ice Fishing in Ontario

We are certifiable. We know. But we're hardy....

My town, downtown in winter...

First, a HUGE thanks to a very generous photographer, John Cornegge, for advice, graciously and willingly given.

You can find him at Think Orange Media John's work has appeared in a variety of very excellent publications and if you surf over to his site, you'll quickly see why.

These are photos shot in downtown in my city. They've been HDR'd. If you'd like to know what HDR is and how to do it, google it, or, better, got to any of:

David Nightengale (Chromasia) and Trey Ratcliff (Stuck in Customs), with John, are among the leading experts and users of this technique. I'll say it isn't difficult to do, exactly; however, it takes a lot of practice to make it excellent.

These photos were shot in this city's Plus15 system, which is the rabbit-warren-y conglomeration of interior walkways that link the majority of this city's down town buildings.

Some of our more vocal counsellors would prefer that we residents walk outside... but then, -30 with wind chill in the concrete wind tunnels outside make one very grateful for the above-ground maze. It's called Plus15 because it is 15 feet above the ground.

Christmas, or something like it...

Looking south from a Plus15 walkway that passes over a usually busy street. This was shot at about 3:30 p.m. December 5th 2009


Looking north from the same walkway. I love the clean, futuristic lines of this shot and also that a large trash bin is at the foot of the shot. Appeals to my skewed view of corporate life and what it does to humans....

My Really, For True, Award-Winning Cowboy Stew Recipe

Hi.

It's super snowy out and I'm having stew for breakfast. Really good stew because it is easy to make, delicious, low cal and very nutritious.

Now, before I give you this recipe, you must:
Promise to try it
Promise to pass it on
Promise not to give me any song and dance about how you don't like beans....

Ok here's how:

• 4 medium potatoes - russets/goldens, whatever. Just maybe not bakers. Thou shalt not peel...
  
• 4 large carrots, scrubbed and cut into 1/2 inch sections. Thou shalt NOT peel...
  
• 1 Large onion. LARGE I said. Softball size at least. Red or Vidalias are perfect. Ok peel...
  
• 4 stalks celery (washed, ok?)
• 2 - 3 cloves garlic, smashed (more if you like garlic or are married to a vampire and you want the night off....)
• 8 Honey Garlic or Mild Italian sausages. I use the Costco brand because they are delicious and come in flats of 10 or 11, which means you can have two just to munch on.Cook first, yeah? They're kinda chewy when raw....
  
• 2 Cans of chopped, stewed/spiced tomatoes - no-name brand is perfect
• 2 cans of Maple Beans - no pork, ok? The pork in those cans is disgusting.
• 2 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
• 1 TBSP sugar (balances the acid in the tomats)

Salt and pepper aren't super necessary due to the tomatos and the sausages being already seasoned.

Heat a LARGE pot - 4 litre size - to medium high; add 3 tbsp olive and/or canola oil

Chop the potatoes, celery and onions into bite-sized pieces (1/2"x1/2" or so); add to pot. Stir so the veggies brown but don't let them burn, ok?

Cut the sausages into 1" sections. Don't worry if the meat pops out. Add to veg and cook until the sausage is about 1/2 cooked... takes about 5 minutes.

Add in the canned tomatoes, beans, Worcestershire, sugar and any other seasonings you like... smoked paprika is really nice...

Bring pot to the boil and then turn the heat down to very low. On low, the mixture should be steaming but not doing much more than looking like it might think about bubbling.

Let the pot simmer for 1/2 and hour or so to let the flavours blend. While that's going on, cook up some rice - brown is best, especially if you cook it with some barley and spelt and wild rice (all those types take about 45 minutes to cook and that's no problem: your stew can simmer away for an hour and will be super scrumptious).

This makes enough stew for six hungry people. It freezes perfectly too. It will be fine refrigerated for three to four days, so you can have some for breakfast all week!

Given the weather in our city, you can leave your stew pot outside, where it will certainly stay cold and will probably freeze... ok.. no, don't do that. You wanna eat this stuff now, not in April...

No cowboys were injured or cooked in the making of this stew.....

The Debate - and the panet - heats up

With the release of thousands of revealing and damaging-to-the-cause emails out of Britain last week, the climate change debate is heating up big time.

Thanks to revelations that a whole bunch of 'scientists' who had lot (of money) to gain had greatly manipulated data - created 'data' in some cases - Gore and Family's machine is finally falling to pieces.

I spoke last week to Christopher Monckton (by email) about the ousting of the so-called scientists involved in this 10 year long scandal. "Good, clean fun," he called it, quite tongue in cheek, I'm sure, adding "I've reported them to the UK Information Commissioner."

In 2000, about four months before G.W. Bush took office for his first 'term' or whatever they called that monstrosity of an administration, author and long-time journalist, Jim Marrs' book, Rule by Secrecy, hit the book stores.

In that book, which came out several months before the US election that year, Marrs makes several predictions based on his extensive - and we're talking 40 years here - research.
1. That, amazingly, G.W. Bush would win the Election, despite Gore's viability
2. That Gore would go on to establish a world-wide 'event'.

That event is this ridiculous manipulation of certain realities - one being that the planet's temperature does fluctuate, all by itself with very little help either way from humans.

Al Gore's very lifestyle belies his postulations. IF he's so bloody sure sea levels are going to rise by 20 feet by 2012, why on earth did he last year buy a condo not six blocks from the ocean? Hm?

That website among MANY others takes a long, hard, SCIENTIFIC look at the realities of planetary climate fluctuations and establishes in reasonably simple language that the World According to Gore is an accounting closer to that of Alice in Wonderland.

By the way, humans account for only Zero POINT 6% (.60%) of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, which is statistically insignificant.

Animals - those raised for food production are a FAR greater contributor to Co2 gasses, but still not in any significant or damaging way. Water vapours, due to the fact that water covers over 80% of this planet, are a far more significant factor in planetary warming and cooling.

This planet is currently exiting a short (in terms of the planet's overall age) cold spell, just as it did back in about 1700 or so.

Global warming has been a very, very effective way of diverting human attention away from other, much more serious issues - like how the global financial markets have been so manipulated and how incidents and wars are planned and executed and why.

Humans suck for their willingness to buy into any scary thing even when it is so obviously made up. Hence the popularity of The Blair Witch Project....

More Calgary Photowalk

As usual, these are absolutely copyright so don't steal 'em or copy 'em or anything, OK? If you want to buy copies, just simply let me know and I will get in touch and let you know how that can happen.

Otherwise, be a nice, honourable person or I'll have to go on a big 'ol rant and y'know how that goes, right? Not pretty....

These were all shot in Calgary in the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary area. Excellent fun except for the part where we were required, by a very grumpy, rule-huggin' guy, to leave the group's mascot - a gorgeous, quiet white dog - in the car. We asked... the dog says he doesn't eat birds and just wanted to go for a walk.... Oh well. No harm done.

Calgary Photowalk