A Pre-Summer Friday Five

Summer is coming (how is it almost June?) and here is the first Friday Five of the season:

When the humidity arrives, you want to be cool without leaving the house in just a bathing suit and look pulled together without feeling smothered in fabric. Athleta’s wide-leg Cabo linen trousers, $99, are structured but breezy. The black is perfect for a fancy evening out while the white, worn with a white top, caramel leather accessories and gold jewelry, would be perfect for an outdoor lunch.

Germany holds asparagus festivals (Spargelzeit!) each May into June, and I think that North American culture is poorer for not sharing this tradition. To honour the greatest green spear of all time, I urge you to make this easy, soothing summer meal of jammy eggs, toast points and asparagus (recipe at the bottom of this post.)

Insanely charismatic French actor Omar Sy stars in The Takedown (Netflix) and I can’t decide if it’s a supremely dumb movie and that you should just (re)watch him in Lupin (also Netflix) or if The Takedown is just what the buddy cop film genre needs: lots of silly action with a forceful anti-racist message. Nothing is as chilling as the terrifyingly and loudly racist little, old white lady character thrown into the mix along with the expected evil white men in suits and prison-tattooed skinheads.

Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue Italian Love, 50 ml edt, $108, Sephora, is lemon-and-green-apple-with-flowers classic Light Blue set atop a richly musky and woody base. It’s quietly cozy and warming on cooler evenings but still irrefutably light and summery for those (you know they’re coming) humid days ahead.

I am easing myself into reading giant doorstopper summer novels by rereading Utz, paperback, $17, Chapters.Indigo, Bruce Chatwin’s slender 154 page novel about a porcelain collector living in Russian occupied Prague.

Asparagus & Eggs

Steam about six or seven asparagus spears per person (after having trimmed or snapped off the woody ends) four to five minutes until softened but not mushy.

If you have your own method for creating jammy eggs, then please use it. This is mine: slide two room-temperature eggs per person into water in a small saucepan on the stove and set the dial up to high. When the water begins to boil furiously, set the timer for 4 minutes exactly, turn the dial to medium high and keep an eye on it. Drain and plunge your eggs into cold water after the four minutes to stop them cooking. Peel them as soon as you can.

Meanwhile, toast and lightly butter some generously sliced sourdough and cut into points (toast points taste better than squares and the ends get dipped into your jammy yolks.)

Bisect your eggs lengthwise and arrange with the steamed asparagus spears in shallow pasta bowls, surround with buttered toast points, shave some parmesan into generous curls with a vegetable peeler and arrange on top. Finally, drizzle each dish with some peppery olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt crystals and a grinding of fresh pepper and that’s it. Early summer in a bowl.

Gift Guide: World Sleep Day

Because there are no big holidays until Easter and Passover, this year I’m mashing up St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th) with World Sleep Day (March 18th.) Translation: I will bake and then demolish a round of Irish soda bread (recipe below) and then hopefully have a good night’s sleep.

It’s funny that World Sleep day comes the week we’ve all had our slumber thrown into disarray thanks to daylight savings time. According to the Canadian Research Chair, up to 25% of Canadians suffer from a sleep disorder. I would argue that by a certain age (ahem) that number hovers around 100%. Does anyone our age sleep through the night unassisted?

Here is the Oldish sleep pack:

Madge and Mercer’s La Calma is a high 50 mg dose of CBD with a micro 2 mg dose of THC for anxiety reduction and sleep assistance. And the subtle ginger and lemongrass flavour handily mask that ‘singular’ pot smell and taste. It cracks me up that so many of us who did not partake when we were younger are all over this stuff now.

The Belif Aqua Bomb sleep mask, $45, Sephora, a cousin to the truly stellar Aqua Bomb moisturizer soothes and hydrates your poor, winter-dried-out face overnight, with anti-oxidant-rich Lady’s Mantle and Scottish heather to calm irritation and redness. So even if you don’t sleep properly (oy), at least the face in the mirror the next morning will look dewy and rested.

A great big, body-wracking O is still the best soporific. Dame Products is a woman-owned company so you get cleverly designed tools that are cringe-factor free, much more aesthetically pleasing than a standard issue vibrator and ‘face meltingly’ (not my words, but such good words) effective. The Aer, $120, doesn’t vibrate, instead using puffs of air to work its magic.

30 minutes before bed, open the window (cold rooms equal better sleep) and lightly spray your pillow with Bleu Lavande’s calming lavender room spray, on sale for only $13.88, Shoppers Drug Mart. When you walk into the gently scented, cold room at bedtime, it will feel like some kind soul (you, a half an hour ago) prepared the room for a good night’s sleep.

Keep Ilia Lip Wrap Hydrating mask, 434, Sephora, on your nightstand as a reminder to use it before bed. Papaya enzyme gently exfoliates while mango butter and a host of nourishing oils bring moisture back to chapped lips. You might argue that a lip product isn’t a sedative, but it’s these bedtime rituals that tell your brain it’s time to sleep.

We’re supposed to turn off our screens and read a book before bed, but that’s difficult when our phones are virtually soldered to our hands. A bath prevents this, unless you are a true cowboy who puts their laptop or iPad on a bath tray, in which case I cannot help you.

My favourite Canadian bath company, Bathorium, has stellar scent blends like Sea Kelp Serenity bath crush, $30, The Detox Market, a Dead Sea salts bath soak with lavender and bergamot that will relax you down to your bones so completely that you’ll have to crawl to your bed.

This stunner of a soda bread is not mine, but with this recipe and a cast iron pan, it can be yours.

And finally, I want to leave you with a recipe for soda bread. It comes together quickly, requires no kneading and by baking it in a cast iron pan you ensure a satisfyingly crunchy crust.

Soda Bread

Makes one round, serves 2-4.

For a savoury version, omit the sugar and add three chopped green onions and a cup of coarsely grated cheddar to the dry ingredients and butter mixture before adding the buttermilk.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups buttermilk (no substitutions)

1 egg (optional, for added richness. So yeah, do it.)

4 1/2 cups all purpose flour (spooned into a measuring cup to ensure an accurate amount. Dragging the cup through the flour and then levelling it off packs too much flour into each cup.)

3 T granulated sugar

1 t baking soda

1 t kosher salt (Diamond Crystal if possible. It really is the best.)

5 T cold, cubed unsalted butter.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and lightly grease a 10 inch cast iron skillet.

Whisk together the cold buttermilk and the egg.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

Add the cold cubes of butter to the flour mixture and incorporate it with a pastry cutter until it all resembles cornmeal (as if you were making a pie crust.)

Pour in the buttermilk/egg mix and stir until combined. When you have a unified (albeit crumbly) mass, turn it onto a floured board and barely knead for only half a minute until the flour is incorporated.

Shape into a round and place in your cast iron pan. Cut a cross into it almost all the way through, as this will help it bake evenly, place on the middle rack and bake for about 40 minutes. (Start checking at the 30 minute mark. You might want to drape it with foil if it browns too quickly.)

Remove when done and cool it on a wire rack and then happily consume it all in one sitting.

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And finally, here’s something to be proud of: the government of Canada reached their $30 million match ceiling for the Red Cross by March fourth, but the Red Cross is still a great place to donate to help Ukraine.