Summer

The other day I admitted I had a great big culinary knowledge gap. Oh, I was willing to share my apricot ignorance, but I was a bit smug about peaches. I considered myself a veritable Ms Know-It-All when it came to my favourite stone fruit....

Gold is the new red. At least for me when it comes to beets. In the past I have been more than a little vocal about my dislike of your garden variety red beets. I want to like them. Really. They have a gorgeous ruby...

Perhaps it's the difference between European and North American sizes. Maybe our crops are bigger and our platters smaller. If shown the same mushroom, would French and Canadian eaters argue over whether it was small, medium or large? I don't know. But I do know...

I'd officially like to apologize to apricots. For years now, I've been the mean team captain who always calls dibs on her friends and chooses the popular kids first, leaving the smaller classmates kicking the grass with their yet-to-be-broken-in sneakers and pretending that being picked...

Gravity. It makes things fall. It's why sauces drip and eggs crash to the floor when dropped. It's why coffee pours out of the carafe and into the mug -- not onto the ceiling. It's why the milk bottle stays on the shelf after you...

Next time I go to the Farmers' Market, stuff wax in my ears and lash me to the shopping cart. Cherries are the Sirens of the fruit world and I can't resist them unaided. Last week, I ventured forth on a mission to buy easy-to-hull strawberries...

Whoever perfected commercial buttermilk is part genius, part half-wit. On one hand, they found a way to mass produce a low-fat, tasty dairy product that makes loaves tender, muffins moist and scones split into perfection. On the other, they sell it in cartons with two...

Living in Ontario has many advantages. Spring brings maple syrup, fiddleheads, ramps, rhubarb and garlic scapes. Summer provides back-to-back crops of fruits and vegetables starting with seed-studded strawberries and ending with juicy, sweet peaches. Good luck keeping up with all Autumn provides -- apples, beets,...

Cooking with seasonal foods can be a bit like getting dragged on stage for an improv act. Even though you've been told the basic premise you don't really know what's coming, you've little time to think, and your success requires saying "Yes!" to what's handed to...

Don't believe everything you read. When researching how to grow garlic, every source I read said garlic from seed was next to impossible or took years to mature. Bulbs were the way to go. So a year ago, out of curiosity,  I left some scapes...