Recipes

Since making a gigantic batch of granola, I've been on an oatmeal kick. While I don't like it as porridge, I love it in desserts. With the cloudy winter skies leaving me yearning for summer berries and the bitter cold demanding something warm, I decided a...

For a couple of weeks now, my quest for a healthy breakfast has made me hanker for homemade granola. During my university days, I used to make big batches of this cereal to fuel me on the long, book-laden walk to campus. These days, I...

We're heading into the mother of all cold snaps. If the Weather Network is right, the warmest day this week will be a lip-chapping -15C. Celsius always sounds colder than Fahrenheit, but keep in mind that anything with a minus sign in front of it...

Is everyone on a diet this week? I don't know about you, but despite my normally ferocious sweet tooth, I'm not ready to face another dessert, scone, pastry or white-flour carbohydrate for a few days. Whether or not you're counting calories, this beef stew will expand...

Until recently, crème brûlée defied me. I followed the instructions meticulously and ended up serving guests a high-fat vanilla liquid with a soggy sugar crust. Then chocoatiers Dominique and Cindy Duby wrote Crème Brûlée: More Than 50 Decadent Recipes and showed me the errors of...

The long-predicted storm has hit. Fluffy, delicate flakes are not wafting from the heavens like diamond dust making everything merry and bright. Au contraire! Tiny, razor-sharp ice crystals are thrashing about in the wind, whitewashing the great outdoors. In this weather, a jaunt for the...

For obvious reasons, I nearly entitled this post "Things Fall Apart". Last year's Nanaimo bars held together like a charm. This year? Not so much. Was it my wonky oven, which as been fixed but is sulking because it will soon be replaced? Did I reduce the...

I don't know how my mother did it. She used to serve a homemade Swedish tea ring, fresh scones, fruit salad, scrambled eggs, sausages and hot chocolate for Christmas breakfast. We faced this gargantuan meal mere hours after gorging on a full Christmas Eve dinner,...

Note to self: Put the camera cable back where it belongs if you don't want to spend the morning looking for the only piece of equipment in the house that will transfer photos to your computer. Sigh...

I could eat this entire stack of shortbreads in one sitting, but will restrain myself. I must leave some for others. With no Scottish thistles pressed into the surface or fancy rosette piping, these are the ugly ducklings of the icebox cookie set. They are also,...