Most Canadians are proud to be Canadian. There are a hundred reasons why, but I think integrity is a big one.

When I first did an online search for some farms or farmer's markets where I could shop for winter retreat food supplies, I learned about Reid's Potato Farm. The farm itself has been a family farm since 1845, but the truly exciting discovery was the self-serve "Farm Market" located right on their property.

I'm not using the term "self-serve" because you shop by yourself; I mean, the market is entirely unmanned. You pick your goods, write it down in the notebook, tally it up with the little purple calculator, and open up the till all by your honest self.

I love that they trust their customers, and I love that no one has ruined it for everyone else. I doubt this honour system would succeed in many other countries.

Although it was the dead of the winter, the market offered a decent variety of produce from neighbouring farms. I picked up a bag of carrots (I admit I was enticed by the handwritten note that read "our carrots are dirty but they taste delicious!"), a bag of Fuji apples, apple cider, a dozen eggs, a jar of elderberry and peach jam, and a frozen strawberry rhubarb pie. All were fantastic. Especially the dirty carrots.

It is also worth noting that I was equally impressed by their website. They really took the time to create a simple, informative, and professional website that is so well written. All too often I find business websites that are too flashy, littered with grammar issues, or non-existent. They have taken the time to not only advertise their farm, but to voice their commitment to environmentally conscious farming.

It's little gems like this farm market that really make rural Ontario so loveable. If you happen to be in the area, stop by anytime. No, seriously: anytime. With a self-serve system, their hours are 24-7!





Photos courtesy of bluetuque.blogspot.ca

The retreat is a mere 4 days away! It's not too late to take my last spot!

It's crunch time for the menu planning and keeping in theme with the winter comfort food, I decided that a puff pastry something-er-other would be perfect.

I've got a couple vegetarians this weekend and one of my favourite vegetarian comfort foods is a flaky, hearty, pot pie. It's easily adaptable for the meat eaters, and equally comforting when filled to the brim with winter vegetables.

Ever since the puff pastry episode of The Great British Bake Off, I've wanted to try Paul Hollywood's recipe to try and make puff pastry from scratch. If you have never heard of the show, or who this Paul character is that I speak of, you are missing out!

The method for making the puff pastry seems straight forward. Make the dough, flatten some butter in the middle, fold and flatten, fold and flatten, fold and flatten. Paul does a great video demo of how to do this, and he stresses how important it is to make sure you rechill the dough and butter between each fold and flatten.

With all the "chill for an hour" or "chill overnight" the whole process does take a little while. I took a few shortcuts (of course) and was really so impressed with the outcome. My trial pot pies were mostly delicious with such a superbly flaky and crispy crust. I did learn that you need to roll a piece of pastry significantly larger than the size of the dish to allow for lots of shrinking, but I'm feeling good about our Friday night dinner to start the retreat off on the right foot!

For the pot pie filling, I mostly followed Ina Garten's recipe for Vegetable Pot Pie: a delicious mix of your usual suspects (carrots, potatoes, onions) plus butternut squash and fennel.

Happy Family Day to all my Canadian readers!

I think I'm beyond using pretty words like "brisk" and "crisp" to describe the kind of winter we're having. As an Ottawa girl at heart, I've always told my Torontonian friends that the secret to surviving the deep chill of winter is to make sure you are well equipped.

Big winter parka.

Long underwear.

And a good pair of wool slippers.

I was at the thrift shop the other day, poppin' some tags, gettin' me some sweata's and decided to turn the $6 wool sweater into a warm pair of slippers.


As with most DIY projects these days, there is an endless supply of tutorials online.

So far, I've tried a modified version of this tutorial from We Can Re-Do It.


I need to try at least one more time. Or maybe attempt another pattern.

Interested in joining me? This will be one of the optional workshops offered at the Winter Warmth Retreat! Just bring a wool sweater and I'll supply everything else!

Cheers to a wonderful 2013!

Purple Workbench has been alive and afloat for over 6 months now and it feels good to have shared some creative experiences with you!

Maybe you baked yourself a pound cake?

Maybe you made yourself an ornament for the tree?



Maybe you were one of the 7 ladies who joined me at a farmhouse retreat to relax, feast, and craft together!



The new year brings new opportunities to be crafty and creative, and I'm excited to announce the next Purple Workbench event!

Purple Workbench presents:


Join the Purple Workbench for a weekend to escape the snowy citylife and make time to relax and create. The 5 bedroom luxury cottage is nestled in peaceful forestry adjacent to the Nottawasaga river, just outside of Orangeville.

Like the previous farmhouse retreat, this is your chance to bring any creative project to work on and have all your culinary needs provided for. I'll have optional sewing workshops available if you are looking to brush up on your sewing skills, but any crafty endeavour is welcome! (I'm thinking of bringing my laptop to finish up some digital photobooks...)

On the menu will be heartwarming meals aimed to comfort and soothe away any winter blues, and there will always be plenty of delicious treats and beverages to fill the weekend.

For more information on the event, including registration, please send an email to contact@purpleworkbench.com. Cost is $300 for a private room plus all meals and snacks.

Wishing you all a fantastic end to your year and creative plans for the future ahead!

Living in a big city can be financially difficult. Things just cost more. But you don't want to sacrifice life too much just to save a couple bucks. There's a fine balance between saving for your future and enjoying life before it's gone.

The lovely writers at Urban Departures are giving a great account of their journey to Financial Freedom without missing out on life's treasures.

They support travelling, good food, buying what you love, athletic luxuries, and a fave at the Purple Workbench: crafty hobbies. All while keeping their financial goals in check.

Where do they splurge? How do they try to save? It's great fun reading about regular (and chic) modern urbanites as they learn about the financial basics and more.

Their latest post is a Purple Workbench post for a DIY Christmas ornament that doubles as an inexpensive gift. Go check out my step by step tutorial on the Zipper Christmas Tree Ornament!

It has been almost two months since the Farmhouse Retreat.

I'm starting to think about my next weekend retreat and I can't help but miss the Farmhouse and the retreat-ladies deeply.

I miss the cloud of creativity where we completely lost track of time.

I was wowed by racerback tank tops, zippered pouches, a gorgeous digital wedding album, cookbook organizers, infinity scarves, pinwheel quilts, the list goes on.

My best friend, Priscilla, travelled all the way from Montreal to resurrect her high-school sewing skills and whip out a custom fit racerback tank top. We had a little snag at the end trying to learn how to use the fancy Bernina rolled hem foot, but the end result was fantastic.




The weekend peaked with an Ontario surf and turf dinner: sausages from Sanagan's Meat Locker with apple braised purple cabbage, salt baked trout with wilted fennel salad, an apple cake with Ontario honeycrisp apples.



How I miss the Autumn.

Winter will be almost as good.

A new location, a new season of frosty beauty; the next retreat will be planned soon. I promise.

Wilted Fennel Salad

I'm not even sure you can call this a salad, but it is truly one of my favourite things to eat. I have entranced many fennel virgins with this side dish. It makes a great accompaniment to most anything, especially dishes needing a little crunch or acid, like a perfectly baked rainbow trout.

1 fennel bulb
salt
olive oil
lemon (optional)

Trim the fennel tops and cut about 1cm off the bottom to peel off the outer layer or two. You could be less wasteful and use the outer leaves, but I find them a little too tough when eating the fennel raw.

Cut the fennel bulb in half and cut out the core with a little V-cut.

Using a mandolin or a sharp knife (my sontoku knife is perfect for this job) very finely slice the fennel lengthwise (vertically). If you missed part of the core then the layers may be stuck together. If it bothers you, cut them loose.

Mix the fennel in a bowl with pepper, 1/2 tsp of salt, a good drizzle of olive oil.

Let rest for 5 minutes. The salt will wilt the fennel and release some of the stronger licorice juices.

Toss and taste; add more salt if needed. Squeeze a little lemon at the end if you want a more acidic salad.

I went to three weddings this month. I love weddings. I've been accused of befriending people just as they get engaged just so I can watch them marry.

I really do love the weddings because of the marriage. The music, the vows, the embrace, the crying, the smiles, the pride. It gets me all tingly inside.

But a nice little bonus to the celebration is enjoying the food. I usually focus on the entree, maybe the pasta course or antipasti buffet. By the time the music starts, I probably look around for a guy holding the coffee so I can enjoy it with a couple bites of dessert before I hit the dance floor.  And then any sweet table following that is usually wasted on me.

Except for the wedding I attended this past weekend.

The cupcakes were made by my incredibly talented cousin, Emily. Maybe she put some extra love into the cupcakes (and jumbo cupcake for the bride and groom to cut) since this was a family wedding, but I ate three of them they were so good. They're big. With an almost 1:1 cake to icing ratio. And oh so moist. Actually, I'm pretty sure I ate four.

Dustin and I have been dreaming about them for days. Look: I'm even writing about them. And since I still hadn't baked a cake to celebrate our 6th year anniversary, I decided to try and bake a cake that was almost as tasty to remind me of those oh-so-good wedding cupcakes. Something moist and so rich you need milk or coffee to help you out, but you always go back for more.

It's been years since I've baked Ina's "Beatty's Chocolate Cake" found in her pink cookbook (my fave). I remembered it to be the best chocolate cake I had baked. I remembered the buttercream icing to be pretty darn good. I remembered that I had some buttermilk in the fridge that needed to be used.

The batter for the cake is surprisingly thin. Maybe that's what good chocolate cake batter should be like? No matter, it turned out so incredibly moist. It still didn't have that creaminess that Emily's cake had after it warmed up in your mouth, and the icing wasn't as delicious (she had a coconut icing and a caramel icing on her cupcakes) but it was good enough for me to eat two slices today.

I'm ordering a batch of cupcakes from Emily for my freezer. Until then, this chocolate cake with autumnal sprinkles is satisfying the void.

Beatty's Chocolate Cake 

by Ina Garten (with slight changes to the icing)

Ingredients

Butter, for greasing the pans
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups good cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk, shaken
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee
Chocolate Buttercream, recipe follows

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter two 8-inch x 2-inch round cake pans. Line with parchment paper, then butter and flour the pans.

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low speed until combined. In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry. With mixer still on low, add the coffee and stir just to combine, scraping the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack and cool completely.

Place 1 layer, flat side up, on a flat plate or cake pedestal. With a knife or offset spatula, spread the top with frosting. Place the second layer on top, rounded side up, and spread the frosting evenly on the top and sides of the cake.

Chocolate Frosting:
6 ounces good semisweet chocolate
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 extra-large egg yolk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
2 tsp instant coffee powder

Chop the chocolate and place it in a heat-proof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Stir until just melted and set aside until cooled to room temperature.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium-high speed until light yellow and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and continue beating for 3 minutes. Turn the mixer to low, gradually add the confectioners' sugar, then beat at medium speed, scraping down the bowl as necessary, until smooth and creamy. Dissolve the coffee powder in 2 teaspoons of the hottest tap water. On low speed, add the chocolate and coffee to the butter mixture and mix until blended. Don't whip! Spread immediately on the cooled cake.