The Handmade Plate

If you know me, you know how I love food. I live to taste new flavours, cook new dishes or well-loved family recipes, to share meals and experiences with friends and family, and to learn from them in return. If you know me, you know how much I love a good dumpling, or the freshest of hand-pulled noodles. And you also know that I appreciate that dumpling or noodle from so many different cultural perspectives; I love the joy of learning all the variations of how we as humans all over the globe can pull together similar ingredients, create similar shapes and forms, and yet develop such extraordinarily different flavours and interpretations of these things. It is kind of magic. And lately, I’ve been really diving elbows deep into the seriously gratifying world of growing my own produce in our little backyard. The backbreaking, months-long, never-ending job of growing and tending full grown fruits and vegetables from seed, harvesting them for daily meals, and more recently preserving the excess for a winter full of the rewards from a summer long labour of love. My excitement levels are off the charts when you want to talk food with me, in whatever capacity.

So here we are. I have been threatening for a while that I might try my hand at starting a food blog, which I hope to turn into something bigger one day (did you say cookbook?! I hope so!). I’ve threatened to start, I’ve made notes and notebooks full of ideas, and I’ve held off because I have that cursed gene of striving for the perfect final idea before I share anything with anyone; fear of putting myself out there to be completely honest. But I know that this mentality is completely backwards. Particularly when it comes to talking about food. I think the thing I love most about food and cooking good, fresh food at home is the knowledge that yes, the first time you try a new recipe – or even more so when you create a dish out of your own head – its definitely not going to be perfection; there will be room for improvements; there will be flavours to tweak, methods to learn and master, and THAT IS THE FUN! And even if it isn’t “perfect” its still incredibly tasty, and a pretty awesome reward for the hard work you put into it. Whether that be a five minute fried egg sandwich on a rushed morning, or an hours long, multi-day, intensive bowl of ramen, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you made something, maybe for yourself, or maybe for someone else. And that’s it.

And so, I am determined to work on my bad habit of hiding, and start sharing, not for the sake of any finished product, but simply for the joy of exploring, learning, and connecting.

My Homemade Sourdough Bread, Mom’s Strawberry Jam on CartierStudios ceramics, made by myself and mom.

I’ve started a list of topics and ideas that I would love to tackle for some future posts, but I would love to hear from you guys on what interests you most! If you’ve been following me on instagram for a while, you’ve probably seen many of my food posts. I want to know what you like to see, what you want to see more of, and if you have any recipes you want me to share! Today I am sharing a sweet + simple recipe from my mom, in honour of my roots and the person who is undoubtedly the reason I became interested in home cooking to begin with. Anyone who has purchased a piece of ceramics from us will have this recipe card in their collection already!

Mom’s Strawberry Jam

Ingredients

- 4 cups fresh strawberries

- 1/2 cup sugar

- 1 tbsp lemon juice

Method

1. Slice strawberries and transfer to a large skillet or cast-iron pan.

2. Add the sugar and lemon juice, and cook on medium heat. Gently mash strawberries as the cook, stirring often until they thicken. This should take about 10 minutes.

3. Remove from the stove, allow the jam to cool before transfering them to jam jars. Store in the fridge for up to 3 weeks.

4. Makes about 1+1/2 cups.