Pearl Lantz Schofield's Pumpkin Pie recipe, made from scratch

Today we used my Nana's recipe to make pumpkin pie from a wonderful Riverbend Gardens pumpkin that was a gift from my friend Owen. It was scrumptious, although probably not special to anyone outside my family. Here's her recipe:

spice mix:
cinnamon 1 tsp
nutmeg 1/2 tsp
ginger 1/2 tsp
allspice 1/2 tsp
dash of salt

1 egg

1 cup pumpkin (fresh* or canned)

1 cup milk/cream blend
1/4 cup sugar (this amount seems low, don't you think?)
or, substitute 1 cup sweetened condensed milk for milk-sugar mix

Whisk all ingredients together and pour into a pastry pie shell. Bake 375F for 45-60 min, until the filling is firm.

*To prepare a fresh pie pumpkin: cut in half, scoop out the seeds, roast the flesh 350F for 1h, let cool, and puree. For more details (and a delicious-looking fancier alternate recipe!) check this terrific post out. 1 pie pumpkin (the little smooth ones) will usually yield enough for two pies.

Fall 2013 Slow News Summary

I'm back to regular life, and gradually catching up on all the writing I've been putting off! I'd like to thank my friends and followers who stuck by me through my foray into covering the municipal election for the Local Good, which we did on the principle that engagement with local politics is consistent with locavorism. I know my twitter and Facebook feeds were pretty #yegvote-heavy from August through October, and I'm sure anyone not in Edmonton who is still following me was muting the hashtag by the end. Here's a summary of what I learned in the process. It was pretty interesting, but I'm delighted to be taking my other interests off the back burner. Speaking of...

On sustainability and environment:

Let's start with the bad news. Arctic sea ice is not recovering. Ice on Arctic islands is melting for the first time in 44000 years. Over 80% of terrestrial ecosystems are at risk from climate change, and ocean acidification likely means all ocean ecosystems are also at risk - and many marine species are already under intolerable pressure from overfishing and plastic pollution. The global food supply is also at risk from climate change, and National Geographic's interactive sea rise map demonstates that unless we can turn things around, many of the world's coastal cities will eventually end up underwater. The most recent IPCC report (even with revisions) is very clear that climate change is anthropogenic and only drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions can prevent unprecedented consequences. The somber tone and stark language being used by scientists trained to speak conservatively with lots of caveats is striking; it brings to mind cold-war-era language around the possibility of triggering a nuclear winter.

So, we have an enormous challenge ahead of us, an enormous responsibility to bear - and an enormous opportunity. The solutions we create as we build our cities and live our lives and move toward a zero-carbon-emissions future will need to be innovative and exciting. Let's do this thing.

An augmented-reality sundial bench by Joshua Barnes, shown at London Design Festival 2013, via designboom. An app allows users to record memories associated with the shadow cast by the dial.

On slow design, slow making, and slow home:

• This introduction to slow design from Fast Company has been widely shared, and deservedly so.
• There are some exciting things happening in slowLab's network of slow designers, and Americans can still watch their video & donate to support their work toward an updated theoretical framework and set of tools for exploring and evaluating slow design here. (I've been chatting with slowLab's Carolyn Strauss about the planned Slow Dialogue for Edmonton and I think we'll be ready to book a space and unveil that event soon.)
• Check out this gorgeous collection of photos of American makers. (Trust me, it's worth the annoying slideshow format interrupted by ads.)
• "Toward A Slower Internet" reviews the Cybernetic Meadow collection - also check out the Consortium For Slower Internet's principles, which echo the ideas of slow design and slow tech. 
• Olivia Sprinkel muses on the cultural shift to "Slow Moving Creative Good". A neat way of thinking about both the principles of slow design and the wider slow movement.
• Scaling up the circular economy, which I guess is what we're calling cradle-to-cradle design nowadays.
• An older post profiling the New Antiquarian movement, which you might recognize yourself in.
• From the suburbs-don't-have-to-suck file, an article about bicycle-friendly exurbs.
• Changes to Etsy’s terms have set off a lot of soul-searching among makers about what ‘handmade’ really means; check out Oh My Handmade's post (and the many comments!) and this op-ed in the New York Times for a taste of the debate. 
• You lucky readers in the UK can still probably grab a ticket to participate in Slow Textiles Group's My Nature Symposium this coming Saturday.

Balmaseda ‘Tafoni jacket’ at the ‘Art of Slow Fashion’ event in New York (photo by Abigail Doan, from her wonderful LOST IN FIBER Tumblr)

On slow fashion:

• Emma Watson asks, “Why is it special to have something you know wasn’t made under terrible conditions by a 12-year-old girl for 20 pence an hour?”
• Good news! "The True Cost" documentary has been funded as of yesterday!
• How gorgeous is Slow Factory's collection of made-in-North-America-by-collaboration-with-craftspeople sustainable silk garments? Check out their post on why slow fashion is important to them.
• I love this DIY from new slow fashion blog tortoise & lady grey for a tea-dyed-and-hand-printed t-shirt. 
• We all love to score a deal at a thrift shop, but there's trouble with second-hand clothes.
• Zady do the fashion math on cost-per-wear.
• Sally Fox's wonderful organically-grown naturally-coloured cotton is being grown and sold again - check out her new FoxFibre website. (The socks are so comfy.)
• Why sustainable fashion needs better aesthetics.
• Rachel from The Year Of Slow Fashion has redesigned her blog, rechristened it Slow Your Style, and introduced a new Slow Sunday post series. Lovely!
• Recovering Shopaholic invite you to join the slow fashion movement.
• I'm totally geeking out over these tissue-cultured textiles.
• Lululemon can seriously go to Hell.
• An old post from 2011 that I just ran across profiles the Matsubas, founders of clothing company Gungendo and pioneers of the Slow Clothes movement in Japan. 
• Levi's is introducing a slow fashion influenced line using a new 'Dockers Wellthread' ethical and sustainable manufacturing process.

On slow food:

• So, the new Pope called Slow Food International founder Carlo Petrini.
• Terra Madre Day - December 10th - is coming quickly. Find (or register) a local event or learn about this year's theme, saving endangered foods, on the Slow Food website.
• A fascinating post about automation in the food industry.
• Recipes I need to try, via other bloggers in the Canadian Food Experience Project: pickled beets, pumpkin pie filling from scratch, and maple apple jelly. (My own most recent posts from the challenge are here, here and here).
• Some great slow food posts from slowmama: How To Eat Your Greens, Homemade Summer Sodas, Slow Cooker Apple Butter, and Holiday Breakfast Casseroles.

On slow travel:

• Six reasons mass tourism is unsustainable. Hmm.
• How fast can you slow travel?
• An incredible story of taking a leap of faith and travelling without any luggage.
• Young Adventuress writes about burning out from constant short-term travel as a professional travel blogger, and slow travel as her path back to feeling balanced.

On slow living, slow parenting, slow money, and so forth:

• You have got to check out Courtney Carver's wise words on slowing down.
• On the peer-to-peer sharing-economy front, you should check out both the BitLock Kickstarter and NeighborGoods (who have expanded their range rather significantly).
• Author Carl Honore did a special for radio where he helped families slow down. Find the episode guide for "The Slow Coach" here - if you're in the UK maybe you can listen, too.
• Introducing slow public relations, and slow TV (which will soon make its' US debut).
• The abundance of slowness.
• The value of slowing down at work.
• Another post on slowing down.
• I love this post from slowmama about teaching our kids to be citizens of the world, and this one on the importance of play, and this one about letting children fail. 

Harvesting and Preserving: Green Tomato Mincemeat

This post is part of the Canadian Food Experience project (also on Facebook) proposed by my friend Valerie Lugonja, who is a board member of Slow Food Edmonton. The project began June 7th, 2013. As we (participants) share our collective stories across the vastness of our Canadian landscape through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity through the cadence of our concerted Canadian voice. Please join us. 

My October was bananas, thanks to municipal election madness over at the Local Good's blog, so this month you'll get a two-fer: my preserving post and my harvest post, all in one. A childhood harvest memory that I cherish, and hope to recreate next year here in Edmonton, is having such a bounty of tomatoes from my mother's garden that we couldn't possibly eat them all. Usually, Mom planted three different varieties: a cherry tomato for salads, a plum tomato, and one other. I remember the flavours but not the names - I'll have to ask her which cultivars they were (update: Mom says she planted the Beefeater and Scotia cultivars). There would be big brown paper bags of them lined up on the windowsill over the sink, to induce them to ripen, but inevitably we'd need to use them up before they all had a chance to get red. So, it was always my maternal grandmother's Green Tomato Mincemeat recipe to the rescue. It makes a wonderful pie filling, and since there is no actual meat in it, it's suitable for vegetarians and vegans.

Photo via Rhubarb & Honey who shares a very similar recipe!

Pearl's Green Tomato Mincemeat

3 pounds (10 cups) green tomatoes
3.5 pounds apples (Gravenstein apples would have been used)
2 cups brown sugar
1 pound seeded raisins
1 pound seedless raisins
1 tbsp salt
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup cider vinegar
3/4 cup apple juice
2.5 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp cloves
1 tbsp nutmeg
2 lemons, grated and juiced

Cut tomatoes in quarters and blend; drain.
Add chopped apples (not peeled!) and other ingredients except lemon juice.
Cook slowly 2-3 hours adding apple juice as required.
Add lemon juice just before bottling.
Can be frozen or canned.

(Sorry, no photo - I haven't had a chance to make this yet! I'll edit this post to add photos as soon as I can, but I wanted to share the recipe right away.)

PS: Oooh, look, Valerie posted her green tomato mincemeat recipe too, with the most mouthwatering photos. Her proportions and spices (candied ginger!) are a bit different from my Nana's, be sure to compare them!

Indigo Vat Party, and Sharpening The Synthetic Vat

On Saturday, I had a few friends over to play with indigo. I provided the space, food, reference books, whatever equipment I had lying around, and some clothes lines; Lesley brought synthetic indigo stock solutions and her equipment; and everyone brought their own fabric, clothing, and yarn to dye. Deanna also brought three of her students in a high-school fashion course. It was so much fun!!

Fresh vat of white indigo. 

Cider 101 with Shovel & Fork

On Sunday, I got to take a cider-making course with Chad and Kevin from Shovel & Fork. Lucky me! If you are in or near Edmonton, you need to check them out - they do all kinds of fantastic skill-sharing courses, from kitchen gardening to butchery. With their permission, I'm sharing a few photos from the course. Naturally, for the complete details, you really ought to sign up the next time this is offered.

We started the rainy morning with a quick chat about fruit choice, then some of us picked apples from Kevin's tree, while the rest worked at the fruit crushing station and cut the larger apples. Those are adapted garburators that we're using to crush the fruit. You can also go old school and use a 4x4 and a bucket. Don't used a steam extraction juicer, which cooks all the great flavours out of the juice.

My Cherished Canadian Recipe: Old-Fashioned Molasses Cookies

While I have lived in Edmonton since 1994, I grew up in Nova Scotia, in a family that has been in that part of the world for generations. I've mentioned my family background before, a mishmash of South Shore German and Swiss, Annapolis Valley English-via-Connecticut Planters, Parrsboro-area English-via-Massachusetts Loyalists, and a series of adventurous brides who crossed The Pond from England to make new lives with dashing sea captains. The recipe I'll share today comes from my husband's family. His dad's people were English sailors who stayed in Halifax when their time in the Navy ended, and Gaelic-speaking Scots whose families came to Cape Breton during the Highland Clearances; his mom's folks are Acadian French who found refuge in the wilds of New Brunswick and married Quebecois families after the Expulsion. (Some early Acadian families are also Metis by blood, although records are so scarce that mitochondrial DNA tests are often the only evidence, and the Metis families were integrated into Acadian culture, instead of developing a distinct culture as happened on the Prairies.)

Molasses was a kitchen staple in the Maritimes as a result of the trade triangle between the Caribbean, Nova Scotia, and Great Britain. We shipped timber out - or turned the timber into sailing vessels - and the ships returned laden with molasses from the sugarcane plantations. (Rum is the favoured distilled alcohol of the Maritimes for the same reason.) For more on the history of molasses as a Canadian food, check out this great post from Bridget Oland from earlier in the Canadian Food Experience series.

This soft molasses cookie recipe is a family favourite that is now at least 120 years old. It came from Mrs. Archie Legere, an aunt of my husband's Acadian grandmother, who operated a hotel at one time (at least, according to the notes in the margin of the recipe card made by my husband's Aunt Lorraine Miller). I believe it originally would have been made with butter instead of shortening, and been written with imperial measurements instead of the metric provided by Aunt Lorraine (who was a high-school home economics teacher). 

A Canadian Food Hero: Chef Craig Flinn

Full disclosure: I've known Craig since high school in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, when we sang together in the choir. He's a funny, easy-going guy with a rich, deep singing voice. But for today's Canadian Food Experience assignment - to choose our Canadian food hero - I chose Chef Craig Flinn because his dedication to cooking with fresh, seasonal, local food and celebrating Canada's rich, varied culinary heritage was my first real exposure to slow food. His first cookbook, Fresh & Local, remains one of my favourites after years of use, and his other books get regular use in my kitchen at home. If you're visiting Halifax, his trio of restaurants on Barrington Street - Chives Canadian Bistro, Ciboulette Cafe, and newly-opened lunch spot Two Doors Down - are an absolute must. While Craig is one of Nova Scotia's culinary stars, he's not as well known as he really ought to be outside of the Maritimes. Let's change that.

photo courtesy of Chef Craig Flinn (via his Facebook feed)