Peach & Berry Crisp

Last week, in my excitement at finding an obscene amount of peaches at a very reasonable price, I bought far too many peaches than I could ever hope to possibly eat. I had been slowly chipping away at the pile, eating a raw peach every day as a snack, when the rest of said pile started to get a little too soft. And so I was like, Egads! All this cheap fruit! I cannot let it go to waste! Whatever shall I doooo!? (previous scene possibly exaggerated).

So, with all these peaches on the verge of being far too ripe, I decided to make sure they would not go to waste, and that I would make something delicious in the process. And so, I came back to an article I had found last week over at Real Simple containing numerous creative ways to use up the bounty of lovely peaches available at this time of year.

This kind of peach. Perverts.

I went through all of them, multiple times, before I found one that seemed just the right amounts of easy, delicious, and requiring ingredients that I had in the house: Peach Crisp. Though it called for more peaches than I had, I was able to supplement the amount of fruit with some berries I had in the fridge. I was hoping for a tart yet sweet late-summer-fruit feel, and my instincts were spot-on. These fruits came together in a wonderful medley of flavours that let me pretend, if only for a few brief moments, that summer was going to stick around for a while. Summer-lovers, this one's for you.

Ingredients

Filling:

6 peaches, sliced

1-1/2 cups fresh blackberries

1-1/2 cups frozen strawberries

1/3 cup white granulated sugar

1 tbsp white all-purpose flour

Topping:

3/4 cup flour

1-1/4 cups light brown sugar

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut up into little pieces

2 cups rolled oats

Method

Mix the fruit together in a large bowl with the granulated sugar and 1 tbsp of flour. Dump it all into a large, shallow baking dish and set it aside. (I forgot to add the flour here, so I mixed it in the baking dish like a fool. Also, my dish was pretty deep. It still turned out fine.)

In another bowl, mix together the brown sugar, salt, flour and butter with your fingers, pinching the mixture as you go along. After a few minutes it should resemble coarse crumbs. Add the rolled oats and mix roughly. Sprinkle this mixture on top of your fruit, squeezing it as you go, making large coarse clumps. It should look uneven and messy and glorious.

Bake in a 350-degree F oven for 45-55 minutes, or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling.

Serve warm, with vanilla ice cream for extra delicious.

And there it is: the best way to make the most of summer's delicious bounty! Remind yourself as you eat it that you are eating fruit. And fruit is good for you. That technically classifies this as health food. You're welcome.

Transformers: Robots in the Snow

So I had this dream. I was at a party with a bunch of people I didn't recognize. Their kitchen floor was only half-finished. It was partially covered with horribly ugly laminate flooring, showing their previous (also ugly) vinyl tiles throughout half of the room. How ridiculous, I thought. You can't even finish your renos before you throw a party? There was beer and cigarettes in all the food, and people kept offering it to me. I was like "no thanks." I eventually found some white cake in the fridge behind all the ruined food and I ate it. And it was awesome.

At one point I treated the events of the party like a TV series, feeling like I had missed the first season of whatever it was because I was missing little bits of information, like why this girl hated that guy and whatever. It was weird.

And then eventually everyone started to panic. There was a sense of impending doom spreading like wildfire. I was suddenly aware of the hatred that every other country in the world has for the United States, and we were attached to those states. So we had reason to be worried. I stepped outside into the snowy morning to hear jet planes overhead, and see some warheads flying our way. I ran back inside, because I was fucking terrified, but of course it didn't make any difference.

While running upstairs to get a better look at our impending annihilation, I saw a giant Transformer had appeared, close enough to our house to block my view from all the windows. What a jerk. He started to pound our house, and oh my god we had to get out of here! As we scampered around the robot's feet he was gingerly trying to walk because every time he took a step he slid. Because his feet were made of metal. HAH! Sucker.

It was suddenly dark outside as I ran around hiding behind trees and running into strangers' houses, because they were coming for me! After one particularly intense battle between my machine gun and the robot's lasers, a hatchback filled with trendy Japanese teenage girls slid in front of me and opened the hatch to reveal some totally awesome laser-shooting device that would totally wreck that robot. "Get in!" they yelled, and we skidded off into the cold, dangerous night.

And then I woke up.

Attention: Students of Earth

YOU NO LONGER HAVE TO GET YOUR TISSUES FROM BOXES AT HOME. YOU CAN TAKE LITTLE TRAVEL PACKS WITH YOU! WHEREVER YOU GO! WITH THIS:

Yes, now you too can get relief from runny noses with this magical product. You no longer have to annoy, disgust and distract those around you trying to concentrate on writing an exam. This has happened to me often enough that I feel it is necessary to educate the world about the existence of travel-pack tissues.

They exist, they are dirt cheap, and they will ensure that you don't get mental daggers thrown at you from half the people in the room.

If you're too afraid to ask to go to the bathroom during an exam because you're afraid that if you leave the room you might forget everything you just crammed since this morning, this is your solution. I would MUCH rather endure listening to 3 seconds of you blowing your nose clear than have to hear you snarking back your wet, runny, slimy snot every ten seconds for the entire exam.

Please. Do it. Or else I will start bringing actual daggers with me to every exam.

Love,

Hannah

Muffins and Stuffing

I dreamed I was taking some muffins out of an oven. Except it wasn't an oven, it was the second-floor window on the side of a house. I was reaching up way higher than I should have been physically able to, and a muffin pan with 4 giant muffins in it were toppling down onto me in slow motion. I'm pretty sure they were cranberry muffins.

So now I had these muffins all around me on the ground, taller than I was, and I remember throwing them far, far away to a house that was across the street. In it was my best friend, and I was like "Hey, have some muffins!" I lobbed them through the air and they floated slowly over to her. In return she lobbed back a giant Hello Kitty-shaped pillow, which had a weird X shape sown into it with the hands and feet at each end. I remember bouncing on it and having so much fun. It was like a cottony bouncy castle; all the bounce with none of the weird plastic smell and possible bacterial contamination.

And then for some reason I was chewing on a teddy bear, trying to eat it. It was so good. I tore off his foot and chewed on it, watching as stuffing flew out in ribbons, floating away on the breeze. Again, all in slow motion.

And then my alarm went off and I very slowly woke up. Yay for being abruptly woken up during REM sleep!

Hey Rosetta - Yer Spring!

This video so sweet. I saw these guys at Osheaga and it was a wonderful show. They create such lovely music, I'm proud to say they're Canadian.

Taken with my phone amidst a throng of sweaty fellow Canadians.

Can't Get Enough.

Of Leslie Feist. This woman is fantastic and I think I'm in love with her new single just a little too much.

Here is "How Come You Never Go There"; listen and be mesmerized.

How Come You Never Go There by Feist

Food Challenge: Chapter 2

So I was just visiting my friend Melissa's blog, BrokeTO, just this morning and got really excited as I read her latest update in the Grocery Challenge. Finally, I can shamelessly admit my love for perusing the grocery store flyers every week. Seriously. I love it, people. It's like a little present that shows me things I can get for cheaper for the next little while. How awesome is that?! (I have definitely become a grandmother. I'm aware, and I've accepted it.)

I especially enjoy stocking up on things I need around the house, like cleaning supplies or band-aids or shampoo. These things are the best to hoard since they don't go bad, I'll always need them, and my taste in shampoos and cleaning supplies is unlikely to change. Find a brand that you like, stick to it, and watch for sales. My favourite cleaning line, GreenWorks, often goes on sale for $2 a bottle at Shoppers, down from about $4.50. Crazy! I recently got a giant-size bottle of my favourite shampoo at a discount price, AND it came with a free bottle of the matching conditioner. Sweet! And if you shop at a store with a points system (like Shoppers Drug Mart with their Optimum points thing) the savings can really add up. And it's a bit of an insurance policy in a way; I know that if things get tight around a few key times of year (which it inevitably does) we won't have to worry about not having enough change to scrape together for necessities like toilet paper or dish soap. And I know that if I DO happen to run out of something, I can cash in some points at the register and save some precious dollars. Here is where you'll be rewarded for loyalty, and it makes sense to take advantage of it.

Melissa's point about sale prices is a good one, too. I recently read an article about what food items are best to buy on sale. I couldn't find the original article despite my best search efforts, but there are some similar ones here and here. It really opened my eyes as to what I was being gouged for and what to buy only when it's on sale. One of the biggest things I didn't realize was putting holes in my pockets was cereal. For this reason I now only buy cereal when it's on sale; this week my local grocery store has big boxes on sale for about $2.50, which is a big dip from their regular price of $4.75 for the smaller, slimmer boxes. Score! And if there's a great sale at a grocery store that's 20 minutes away, and if I need to do a "big" grocery run anyway, I'll go and it will be worth the trip. Grocery stores often won't reward your loyalty, so there's no real need to just stick to one. Shop around. Most stores have their flyers available online as well, so even if you don't get a regular news publication delivered to your door you can still keep up with what's on sale. Unfortunately for me, the only grocery store in my little town is a 24-hour Foodland, which generally has prices that are higher than most. But this means I just hunt that much harder for deals at grocery stores in neighbouring towns. To make the drive when I need more apples is a bit silly, but for large trips the savings really add up, and what you can get at a discount store for $50 is more than what would cost the same at a 24-hour store.

The only grocery chain that offers rewards (as far as I know) are the PC-associated stores (Loblaws, No Frills, etc). If you get a PC Mastercard, you can earn points on any dollar you spend, ANYwhere, which is pretty great when you think about it. If you take it a step further and create a PC bank account, you earn points anywhere plus double the points when you use your PC Debit card at participating PC stores.

I feel like an infomercial announcer. But wait! There's more!

For those who drive cars daily, there's another way to save on groceries: If you head to a Superstore/No Frills gas station, you will earn $0.02 on every litre that's redeemable for a discount off your next purchase at a PC store. (On top of that, the gas prices at these locations are the cheapest by at least about $0.05). If you use your PC debit card to pay at the pump, it doubles to $0.04 per litre. And in a car with a large gas tank, that can really add up. I've been handed receipts from these gas bars with numbers like $1.98 at the top. The biggest one I got was something like $2.06. Two whole dollars! I know! Filling up a few times a week really adds up the savings, all from something we have to buy anyway: gas. I had maybe 4 or 5 receipts with me last time I did a big grocery trip, and we saved about $7. That's 3 loaves of bread, or a big family-size pack of chicken drumsticks. For free! Awesome, right?!

I know this extra discount is only available to people who drive a lot, and happen to live in an area with these specific stores (location finder can be found here). But the Superstore/No Frills/Independent grocery store trend is growing, as people realize that shopping at over-priced "boutique" grocery stores is a rip-off. Do a little looking around, and you'd be surprised at what you find! The deals are out there, you just may have to put in a tiny bit more effort to take advantage of them. Good luck with your deal-hunting!