Strawberry Rhubarb Bars

Vicki Delany's Strawberry and Rhubarb Bars

I found it a bit odd to grate the butter, but these turned out just great.  I brought them to a pot luck and they were a huge hit.  Try to make several hours ahead of time because they do have to cool in order to be sliced neatly. 

Crumble mixture

1 cup butter chilled from the fridge

2 ½ cups (390 g) all-purpose flour

¾ cup (95 g) graham cracker crumbs

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons (62 g) large flake oats

½ cup (105 g) sugar

¾ cup (144 g) brown sugar, packed

1/8 teaspoon salt

 Zest of one lemon

 1 egg

1 egg white

Filling

3 cups rhubarb sliced into 1-cm pieces

3 cups strawberries halved and sliced

½ cup (105 g) sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons corn starch

Method

Preheat oven to 375 and grease a 9 x 13 tray (I prefer to cover the tray in parchment paper - easier to clean up - V). Use a cheese grater to grate the butter onto a plate and then place the grated butter in the freezer while you mix the rest of the ingredients. 

In a large bowl stir together the flour, graham cracker crumbs, ½ cup oats, brown sugar, white sugar, lemon zest, and salt. Add the egg and egg white and mix them into the dry ingredients with a fork.

Get the grated butter from the freezer and add it to the crumble mixture. Use your hands to rub the butter into the flour until it resembles crumbs the size of peas. Remove two cups of the crumble mixture to use as the topping and stir the 2 tablespoons of oats into this mixture.

Press the remaining crumble mixture into the greased pan into an even layer.

Stir together the chopped rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, vanilla and corn starch. Spread on top of the layer of pressed crumble. Top with the reserved two cups of crumble mixture.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes until the top is golden and the filling is bubbling. Allow to cool completely before cutting into bars. 

Did someone say Hats?

Hats.  You know I love them.  I was fascinated by this exhibit at the Museum of London in, guess where, London. 

Hey, how did this sneak in here?

Party Time!

Bloody Words was a fantastic weekend in Toronto.  Everyone had a fabulous time. Sadly it's now over for two more years.  But there are always book events to attend.  If you are going to be in Toronto in June, please come out to the Dominion on Queen for a joint book launch with C.F. Forrest and me.  Chris is the author of the hugely wonderful (yes, I can use adjectives when I need to) Charley McKelvey series, of which Devil's Dust is the (sob) last.  Me, well, I will be launching Gold Mountain. Here's the info.

Dominion on Queen in Toronto.  500 Queen Street East.  7:00 PM.  Thursday June 14th.  Music by Allister Thompson.  Food, music, drinks at the bar, a chance to schmooze with the mystery literati.  What more could you want?

All About the Art

Some of the paintings and sculptures I loved in London. 

A Trip to London

I'm back from a quick and fun trip to London.  I went for six days, stayed in just one hotel, and walked and walked.  I saw so much and had such a great time.  I got a lovely deal and was able to stay in a fabulous luxury 5 star hotel in Kennsington, right on Sloane Street.  I've attached a few pictures.  I was walking from Trafalgar Square trying to find the British Museum and looked at my map and realized to my considerable surprise I was in Seven Dials. A nice area with small shops trendy restaurants very close to the theatres. But not in Fiona MacGillivray's day.  Seven Dials, as we learn in next year's Gold Web, was the worst slum in Europe in Victorian days (and that's saying something!). It was there Fiona lived from the age of 13 to 15 and where she learned some important life skills. 

The picture below is a street in Seven Dials.

This trip was all about the art.  A Turner from the Tate Britain.  Perhaps my second favourite painter, after Rembrandt.  I saw Rembrandt at the National Gallery, but no photos allowed there.

Catching up on old news at the British Museum.

Two classic beauties 

Fiona had to beg in the streets of Seven Dials. This is my experience.

Klondike and Titanic: A Lot in Common

Over the past week people have been fascinated by the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

What is it about this ship that has captured our attention for so long? Plenty of other disasters, on sea or land, on which we could have focused our attention.

But the Titanic stands above all for a story we are drawn to again and again.
I believe that one of the reasons the Titanic is so interesting to us in the 21st century, is that it marked the beginning of the modern era.

I talk a great deal, in public appearances and blog posts, about the Klondike Gold Rush as a time of enormous optimism. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people set off, on foot, across the continent, over the mountains, because they believed that though hard work and a bit of luck they could make their fortune.

Most did not. Most of them found nothing but hardship and toil. By the time news of the great gold strike reached the Outside world, the best claims were taken by the miners who were already there. All the tens of thousands of late-comers could do was get a job working someone else’s claim or turn around and go back home.
The only people who really made money where those who “mined the miners”, like my protagonist, Fiona MacGillivray, the owners of dance halls and saloons and other businesses.



The dawn of the 20th century was a time of great optimism. Everyone looked forward to the wonders the future would bring. In Gold Digger, Mrs. Mann tells Angus MacGillivray, twelve years old, when he wishes they had a telephone, “many wonderful things you’ll see in your lifetime, dear.”

Yet many of the new things in the 20th century weren’t exactly wonderful. Angus is 12 years old in 1898. He’ll be twenty-seven in 1914, and we know what that means.
Same with the Titanic. It was an unsinkable ship, the marvel of the era. No need for adequate lifeboats, they wouldn’t be necessary.

Technology and ingenuity would be all one would need.

And we all know how that turned out.

The sinking of the Titanic was a turning point in the sense of optimism that had greeted the arrival of the 20th century. As those Klondike would-be prospectors had discovered fourteen years before, perhaps the new century wasn’t going to be as wonderful as everyone expected.




Both events merely set the stage for the beginning of the truly modern world in August of 1914.

Klondike Friday: Not on the Lord’s Day

Today is Good Friday. I'm planning to go to a fabulous little shop in Bloomfield called Diva which -stocks fancy hats and fascinators. I'm in need of a new 19th century-style hat for my upcoming promotional appearances for Gold Mountain.

Which got me thinking about changing attitudes to religious days.

As I’ve discussed here before, the Klondike Gold Rush was notable for the presence of the police. The NWMP was in the territory before all those mad prospectors and their hangers-on began flooding across the border. Thus what the newcomers found was not a wild west town, but a place where the police were firmly in control and some laws strictly enforced.

The Mounties turned a semi-blind eye to offenses such as prostitution and gambling recognizing that banning those things outright would simply lead to driving them underground. Somethings they didn’t bend on, however. Such serious crimes as the use of vile language or working on Sunday – the Lord’s Day.

Swearing in public could get you tossed in jail and any form of work on Sunday could see one facing the long arm of the law. It has been recorded that people could be, and were, arrested for such offences as chopping wood for their own stove on a Sunday.

Times certainly have changed, haven't they!


Get it early: Gold Mountain has appeared on KOBO in advance of publication date. So, if you have a KOBO e-reader, now’s your chance: click here. Gold Digger and Gold Fever have been on KOBO for a while. I am expecting (hoping!)they will be available in all electronic formats soon.