Quaintrelle Weekender

Four ways to a better weekend

Welcome to Quaintrelle Weekender.

This is a short list of things I am currently loving to make eating, drinking, and hosting easier and a lot more interesting.

Not the best capture, but while you can’t see the Awesome Butter Sauce clinging to the pasta, you also can’t see it pooling at the bottom of the bowl.

I had a colonoscopy yesterday, which I will tell you more about in Wednesday’s edition (I bet you can’t wait). It wasn’t the highlight of my year, but it wasn’t all that bad, all things considered.

One of the good things to come out of the experience, was my reacquaintance with beurre monté, or what I informally call Awesome Butter Sauce. Now that my memory has been jostled I’ll likely be putting this sauce into the regular rotation when I want something quick, easy, and comforting.

Speaking of comforting, I have a long list of roasts and braises I’m anxious to begin cooking. This will have to wait until next week, as for now, even though I’ve been cleared to go whole hog, I think I better ease myself back into solid foods. Tonight is macaroni and cheese. I’m not mad about it.

It’s Like Buttah!

Awesome Butter Sauce

I was advised by the doctors to eat only low fibre, colourless foods that neared the state of pablum for easy digestion, starting two days before my, ahem, procedure. Basically, I was on a medically supervised diet of mashed potatoes (no skin!) and pasta with butter.

But just because I’m eating simply, does not mean I don’t want to eat well. Enter Awesome Butter Sauce, or what’s more intimidatingly known as beurre monté.

Despite the pinkies up moniker, beurre monté is just butter blended with hot water to create a creamy, dreamy, stickable sauce. This is far better than simply melting butter because butter on its own separates and puddles at the bottom of the bowl, leaving nothing on the food.

Beurre monté, on the other hand, emulsifies to stay intact, silky, and strong enough to cling to the noodle (or vegetable, or fish, or whatever you want to add it to) without dripping off.

You can also flavour your BM (perhaps my blood sugar is still a little low after my last few days, but the child in me smirks at this abbreviation) with anything you crave: garlic, chili flakes, lemon zest, truffle (ooh la la). Me, I was keeping things simple, so I left my Awesome Butter Sauce, as is.

For about a 1/2 cup of sauce:

• 2 Tbsp water (I use the starchy, salted pasta water, but fresh is totally fine)

• 6 Tbsp cold butter divided into pieces

1. Simmer the water in a small sauce pan over low heat (you want a gentle simmer not a rolling boil otherwise the sauce will split)

2. One at a time, drop a cube of butter into the water, whisking vigorously until melted. Keep doing this until all the butter is used.

3. Keep warm over low heat until needed.

Note this can’t be made ahead and reheated. But it only takes 10 minutes to come together so that shouldn’t be a major obstacle.

Get The Funk Out

Eliminate Mothball Odours

I order all my jeans from a popular clothing chain. And every time an order arrives, without fail, the smell of mothballs is embedded in the fabric. As gross as this is, the jeans are worth the stink.

Unlike the wood cutting board disinfecting trick I shared a few weeks ago (linked again below), mothball stench requires the big guns. This has a few steps, but it’s mostly hands off and it works really well.

Don’t feel the urgency to wash your mothballed garment immediately if time is an issue. I didn’t, so on sunny and/or breezy days I hung my jeans outside to air out (taking them in at night to avoid the dew and damp.) Admittedly this doesn’t do that much, but I reason it can’t hurt and is better than leaving them stinking up the laundry hamper.

Tools:

• White vinegar

• Baking soda

• Hot water

• Washing machine

Steps:

• Step 1: set your washing machine to the soak cycle with water as hot as your machine allows. On the “extra small” load add 2 cups of plain white vinegar. Throw in your jeans, and only your jeans (or whatever washing-safe article of clothing is offending you.)

• Step 2: Sometimes, though rarely, if it’s just a little whiff of mothball this is enough. But if traces remain, do a second soak with hot water on extra small, and add in 1 cup of baking soda (no vinegar). (My jeans were particularly rancid so I opted for a third soak with another cup of baking soda, but usually the vinegar then baking soda method is sufficient.)

• Step 3: Allow to air dry, preferably in full sun on a breezy day.

• Optional Step 4: Once fully air dried, throw your jeans in the dryer for 5 minutes to lose the wood board stiffness in the legs.

Have a Ball

Reusable dryer balls

To counter my fast fashion, probably sweatshop-made jeans, which will take approximately 500 years to break down in landfill, I use enviro-friendly dryer balls. It’s all about balance.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a lady approaching a certain age, or maybe it’s because I’m literally watching the world burn, but I’m becoming a bit obsessive about my contributions (or ideally lack of contributions) to pollution and garbage.

But seeing as this is mostly a newsletter about having a good time, I will spare you my short essay on why dryer sheets are the devil  (but quickly – they create an unnecessary amount of waste that take years to decompose, chemicals used are harmful to waterways and contribute to air pollution, and the waxy coating on the sheets builds up on your clothes ironically increasing drying time, and in your dryer, causing it to malfunction.)

Wool dryer balls are so much better for the environment, for you, and for your clothes. And if you really, really want to smell like “spring rain” you can buy some essential oils and spritz it on the balls to infuse into your laundry. They’re affordable (I got mine at the Dollar Store), last literally forever, and, if and when it comes time to replace them, they’re made entirely of wool, so just chuck them in the compost.

Get Outside

High Park Nature Centre

Hmmm. It seems many of you are keen to try your hand at mushroom foraging.

After Wednesday’s post (if you missed it, it’s linked below) on how I went alone to a foraging class because no one was interested in joining me, I heard from a number of people that they would have gone, had they known about it.

My intro class was hosted by the High Park Nature Centre, which also has a number of interactive events every month – bird watching, full moon hikes, nature sketching classes, community tree planting, habitat discoveries – if it involves nature, learning, and any activity that attracts people wearing Tilly hats and eating granola, they’ve got it. I’ve linked to the HPNC’s calendar of events, but you could also stay up to date on Instagram.

My class was led by expert forager Steve Lukacic who teaches foraging (as well as loads of other eco interests) all around Ontario, so if you’re not Toronto based, you can easily find something closer to you.  

Thank you for reading Quaintrelle.

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Have a great weekend.

xo – Erin