September Salsa

Sweet Labour Day

Ah, sweet Labour Day, the last great weekend of Edmonton's glorious, but fleeting summer. Some people hit the road to escape the city, others hie themselves off to Fort Edmonton Park, Symphony Under the Sky, or the River Valley.  Many stay home to watch Edmonton trounce Calgary in the Labour Day Classic. Her Majesty and I worked our fingers to the bone. She weeded the garden and I made salsa.

Ring of Fire

While she hoed and raked and pruned, I chopped Roma and Beefsteak tomatoes, Yellow Banana, Hungarian, Green Bell, and Ring of Fire chilli peppers, garlic, and enough onions to make me bawl.

The four batches that I made range in heat from incendiary to piquant, hurting to hot, and spicy to searing. Insanely hot? Not quite, but full of flavour and zest, for sure!

Preparation is Key

What did I learn from making salsa this year? That wearing gloves when handling hot peppers is a really good idea. Adding just one more Ring of Fire Pepper can hurt. Sharpening a knife before hand makes chopping tomatoes a breeze. Having a selection of India Pales Ales to enjoy while putting together the salsa makes all the difference.

 

All good things take time, patience and determination. Cooking and real estate are no different. They take experience and attention to detail.

Please give me a call if you need a realtor who knows Edmonton and loves Lendrum.  I'd be honoured to help you meet your housing needs.

www.GregKnowsEdmonton.ca

Greg's International India Pale Ale Salsa

Ingredients

·       5 lbs slightly under-ripe Roma

·       10 lbs Beefsteak tomatoes

·       A handful of hot peppers, including, but not limited to Hungarian, Jalapeno, Ring of Fire, and Yellow Banana. (Use caution. You can always add extra hot peppers to increase the heat, but you cannot easily reduce it.)

·       Assorted sweet and mild peppers. The greater the variety the better. I buy mine from the Italian Centre.

·       2-3 large onions

·       13 oz tomato paste

·       1/2 Cup Pickling Salt

·       2 Cups Vinegar

·       2 TBSP Sugar

·       Oregano, Cumin, Black Pepper

·       Garlic

·       A selection of India Pale Ales from Belgium, Britain, and Canada

Stage One

Chop tomatoes into eighths. (I leave the skin on, but you can blanche the tomatoes and remove the skin, if you wish.)

Throw chopped tomatoes into a plastic pail and mix in salt. Let sit for 12-24 hours.

Carefully drain tomatoes. The more salt water you pour off the better.

Enjoy a well-earned IPA from Belgium.

Stage Two

Place tomatoes in stockpot and turn heat on to medium. Have your assistant constantly stir the salsa or it will burn. Keep it at a gentle simmer.

Seed and chop peppers. Wear gloves while working with the hot peppers. Slice or grate onions. (I do not seed the Ring of Peppers.) A serrated grapefruit spoon works perfectly for seeding and removing the pith.

Place a small bowl in the freezer.

Add peppers, onions, tomato paste, vinegar, garlic, and spices.

After an hour or so, spoon 6-8 tablespoons of the salsa into the chilled bowl. Return to freezer for 5 minutes. Once the salsa is cooled to room temperature, if it is too mild, add a couple more chopped hot peppers to the pot and cook for ten minutes more.

Monitor assistant while enjoying an IPA from Britain.

Stage Three

Have assistant remove salsa from heat. Fill sterilized jars to about an inch from the top. Fit on sterilized lids. Place in canner and process at a full rolling boil for 15-20 minutes, depending on the size of jars.

Supervise canning with a delicious IPA from Canada.

Edmonton in the Summer

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Everyone who has lived in Edmonton understands the agony and the ecstasy of our summers.

The agony is that summers are often beset and besieged by virtually every meteorological phenomena known to man, except maybe the Big Four—earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. The ecstasy is that they take a long time to come and when they do, they are climatic. Our city suddenly burgeons with life.

People are walking their dogs, bicycling to work, barbecuing, gardening, playing ball, and enjoying life out of doors.

In the Beginning

A friend of mine already mourns the waning days of summer at the solstice. For him, it is the beginning of the end. He knows what the future holds and he shivers with dread. I prefer to celebrate Midsummer's Eve with friends, neighbours, and family, feasting in our backyard, nervously watching the sky and praying that the rains hold off,  and the temperature doesn't suddenly plummet .

The Swedes have it right. For them, the solstice is not the beginning, but the middle. In northern climates, we have to start summer as early as possible. I am thinking that it now begins in May, before the roads have been swept clean, before the last frost and before the mosquitoes.

In fact, I would argue that Edmonton's summer begins when young women start wearing shorts, flip flops, and tank tops; when young men begin riding their motorcycles on Whyte Ave; and, when middle-aged couples drive their convertibles with the tops down.

Light in August

This year, I watched the CariWest Parade for the first time. On a whim, a few of my friends and I found our way downtown, bought coffee at the Transcend on Jasper, and sat in the sun, waiting for the dancers and the steel drums bands to swing by. What fun! We laughed all day.

Please give me a call if you need a realtor who celebrates summer in Edmonton and loves Lendrum. I'd be honoured to help you meet your housing needs.

www.GregKnowsEdmonton.ca

Motorcycling and Real Estate

The Daughter I Never Had

The idea of motorcycling has always fired my imagination. As a young teen, I was trapped and constrained on every front. I wanted a motorcycle, but all I could afford was a green CCM three-speed with silver fenders.  My parents saw the rebellious James Dean and the wild Marlon Brandon; I saw Steve McQueen in On Any Sunday. I yearned in vain for the freedom of the open road.

When I finished high school, I worked as a construction labourer, attended university, married, and started a family. There was never quite enough money to go around.  When my daughters became teens and were desperate to escape my watchful eye, they hardly suspected that I too had yearnings that could not be expressed.

 Eventually, I bought a long-neglected 1973 650 Yamaha. I named her Cordelia, mostly to tease my daughters who had not read King Lear.

The joke came back to haunt me because the bike, unlike my daughters, would always break down and leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere. She was unfaithful, untrustworthy, and completely predictable. She took me on a magical mystery tour and left me stranded as far from home as possible. Instead of setting me free, Cordelia promised much and delivered little. I knew this in my heart and kept going back for more. I was hers.

Flower of the Mountain

My second bike was a completely restored 1972 CB 350 Honda. She looked good and garnered attention from every street corner. I had named her Molly Bloom before I had finished Ulysses. She was as safe and as docile as her Irish namesake was dangerous and ill-tempered. She didn’t capture my heart, so I sold her during one of Edmonton’s infamous March blizzards to the nicest guy in Edmonton. As he trailered her away, his smile was as broad as my wallet was full. Free at last, I thought.

She feeds me tea and oranges

My current bike is a 1990 VTR 250 Honda. She is fast and nimble and loves twisty backcountry roads. I know she’s pint-sized, but she feeds me tea and oranges all the way from China. I call her Suzanne because she’s touched my soul with her power and might. She’s also the only motorcycle I’ve owned who’s gotten me into trouble with the law.

If you need a REALTORÒ who has learned the hard way to drive the speed limit on 114^th St and 57^th Ave, give Greg Randall a call at 780-940-2929. His strength is helping people meet their housing needs.

www.GregKnowsEdmonton.ca

Real Estate and Flyfishing

Brad Pitt?

Now that our streets are swept clean, the trees in full leaf, and the garden finally planted, I can turn my thoughts to those summer festivals that make our city a great place to live: The Free Will Players, Street Performers, Capital Ex, Taste of Edmonton,  Folk Festival, Fringe, Symphony Under the Sky, not to mention the Eskimos, Capitals and FC Edmonton.

If that weren’t enough, there’s the pleasure of getting out of town for the weekend. I like to fly fish. I’m not very good at catching anything other than snags, let me hasten to add, but I am a great collector of the gear. My ensemble includes a vest, rod, water bottle, polarized sunglasses, catch and release net, hook hone, barb squisher, fly floatant, nail knot tier, and a Canadian-made Tilley bought from a men’s store near your home. Quite frankly, I think I look like Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It.

Every year, I go to the Fishin’ Hole to buy a angler’s license in an act of faith. I hope that I will stand on the bank of a free-flowing river, casting my line back and out in an arc and presenting a fly that matches the hatch the trout are feeding on.  On a good day, the trout may mouth the fly, but because I am lost in my thoughts, I forget to set the hook when I feel the tug, and the fish is gone.

Having angled, to say I had fished would be a gross exaggeration, I return home with my soul refreshed. Once again, I am ready to sell real estate. Give me a call, if you need a REALTOR® who knows Edmonton and loves Lendrum.