My little corner of heaven...

those were the days...

...back when

One of the few regrets now that we live in a condo is that I don't have a garden. I miss digging in the soil, planting, watering and enjoying the fruits of my our labour. Those were idyllic summers where every evening and weekend would find the two of us in the back yard.

I don't think Peter misses toiling on his carefully manicured lawns, but I'll admit those times make my eyes misty as we sit on our little balcony and watch the gardeners as they chop up the badly seeded lawns with their gas lawn mowers and ignore the dead branches on the trees and bushes around our building.

Short of becoming one of those busy bodies that every building seems to have [and yes, our's is Velma, an elderly lady who attends the monthly strata council meetings with a long list of complaints, of which the gardeners' shortcomings are always noted] I decided to invest in a window box and a few pots and focus my energy on growing herbs.

So last weekend, I dragged poor Peter [who thought he'd finally put those visits to rest] to our local garden centre and scooped up a handful of potted herbs, a bag of soil and a few terra cotta pots. Well, those dozen little potted herbs cost me over $50! What used to be a 99-cent a pot purchase has now become big money! Not one of them was under $3.50. But I wanted my little herb garden and nothing was going to stop me!

We came home and I immediately set myself to repotting and planting. Two glorious hours! I'd forgotten how wonderful it felt to put my hands in soil [ok... yes, I wore gardening gloves, but still!].

From left to right: oregano, par-cel, tarragon, rosemary, cilantro, sweet basil and chives.
The little gnome figurine belonged to my grandmother and it sat on her windowsill guarding her potted herbs!

Mission accomplished, I sat down with a cuppa and admired my handiwork. That's when Peter informed me about one of the condo bylaws: no planters/window boxes attached to balcony railings. So I've moved the window box to the inside of the balcony, and I'm hoping since we're at the back of the building, no one will notice... or if they do, they won't report me. I'm on good terms with Velma and she has a soft spot for Peter!

Lavender in the sheep planter... two types of mint (English and orange)...
and the king of all herbs, dill! (I am Polish, after all!)

But I have my herbs! And they're growing by leaps and bounds! I'm eager to start snipping little branches of rosemary for the roast lamb I want to make next weekend, and chopping home-grown fresh chives for our Sunday brunch of scrambled eggs!

I don't need much room - I just need to satisfy that primal urge to bury my [gloved] hands into soil, nurture my plants and take pleasure in knowing that there's nothing more local than the herbs on my balcony - ready for the cutting! The pure joy of gardening is in the plants you grow.

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Measure twice... edit once!

About two weeks ago, I was doing some online research at work - checking out foodie sites for potential advertising options - and came across Edible Vancouver Magazine, a local online magazine that caters to all things food. Searching around, I found their recipe section, and was intrigued with a recipe for Sweet Potato Maple Cake. I'm always on the lookout for sweet potato recipes as Peter, my Kiwi husband, loves kumara, a root veggie native to NZ, and the North American sweet potato is about as close as you can get to that unique kumara flavour. [My all-time favourite dish is banana and kumara salad, but nothing beats his Mum's leg of lamb and roasted kumara dinner! Okay, I'm digressing... and salivating at the thought!] I bookmarked the recipe, deciding it would be a perfect dessert for Easter to take on our trip to Sechelt to see Stefan and his family.

As is my usual baking process, I re-read the recipe at least 30 times over the last week and on Wednesday evening prepped the sweet potatoes [the recipe called for one cup... typically, I made five! My mother always said I should have been a cook in the army!]. Something was niggling at me, and I couldn't quite place it, but it finally dawned on me last night just as I was gathering all my ingredients, that the recipe wasn't correct. It had to do with the measurements for the flour, which were in imperial and metric. 1 cup does not equal 425mL! Rats! I checked the measurements on my usual conversion site and then searched online for some other sweet potato maple cake recipes and sure enough, all of them indicated at least 1.5 to 3 cups of flour. Rats again!

This wouldn't do! I grabbed my spurtle and shot off two emails, one to the magazine site and one to the author of the recipe, who has her own blog. That was at 10:30pm last night. Early this morning I had a lovely email from the author with a revised recipe... and an equally nice letter from the publication. In fact, they found another error in the recipe: 1.5 cups of buttermilk instead of a half cup (sweet potato maple soup!).

Happily, I gathered all my ingredients and re-read the new and improved recipe one more time. Zut alors! Another error! Butter had been replaced by the word buttermilk! Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, I started to think this is how people become paranoid and end up checking and re-checking they've locked their door on the way out, or patting their pockets over and over again to make sure they have their keys!

I couldn't resist emailing back the author. Bless her heart... she probably thinks I'm some wacko who is stalking her and her recipes! Honest, I'm not! After all, I work as a proofreader in the marketing department at UBC Continuing Studies! It's second nature to correct everything and everyone!

I've checked the website and sure enough, the recipe [see above for the link to Sweet Potato Maple Cake] has been fixed! Kudos to the publication and I also want to acknowledge Claire Lassam. She has a lovely blog site and some incredible recipes: Just Something Pretty. Have a gander!

As is my wont, I did tweak the recipe a tad: added ginger (it's the spice of choice in this household) and nutmeg. I also left the cake in for a total of 50 minutes, as it was still raw at the recommended 30 minutes.

Just out of the oven - the aroma is to die for!

...and I've just taken it out of my beautiful "Heritage" bundt pan
[but that's another story for another day!!]

A light sprinkling of icing sugar (or maybe an orange-flavoured glaze?), some fresh whipped cream and a pot of fresh coffee on the side, and I think we're good to go! [I just have to make sure it gets to Sechelt in one piece. Do you hear that, Peter?!]

Thank you Claire - can't wait to taste it!


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