Bake with abandon!
This post will come as a surprise to those who know me. I’m not a beer drinker. Yet here I am creating a recipe using ale. Samuel Adams Latitude 48 IPA to be precise. Why? Because I was asked. And they specifically wanted a dessert, …
This post isn’t what I intended. I had planned on doing a round-up of my favourite cold-weather soup recipes. Healthy, economical, waste-free, toe-warming soup. But after poking about the Internet for a minute or two, I realized everyone had the same idea. So instead, I’m sharing …
The Canadian Food Experience Project – The Christmas Edition – Walnut Crescent Cookies In our family, Christmas changes little, year to year. Once the New Year arrives and the decorations are packed away, all Christmases Past roll together into a single, hazy holiday scenario to …
The holidays are rushing in and the panicked questions have begun. With crazed eyes and shaking voices, friends ask me for easy holiday recipes to take to a party or serve their own guests. They always say “easy” with extra emphasis, pausing before and after …
Go to your bookshelf. Pull out your most dog-eared, battered, and beloved cookbooks. Who wrote them? If you’re Canadian, chances are at least one of them is by Elizabeth Baird and her intrepid team at the Canadian Living Test Kitchen. How many bear her name? …
Describing this cookbook as unconventional would be misleading. It doesn’t contain outrageously challenging recipes or impossible to get ingredients. You won’t find odd flavour combinations or dishes that look like storybook animals. If I may mix my fictional elements, Alice Eats is the James Bond martini …
Concord Grapes leave me conflicted. They fill up my senses in a way that would do John Denver proud. They also break my heart. When I see their deep blue-purple skins overflowing the baskets at the market stalls the joyful, creative part of me wants …
Growing up, my mom’s homemade grape jam appeared on the table in recycled baby food jars with a paraffin wax seal. While the jam bubbled and the jars boiled, she melted bricks of wax on the stove top in an old tomato juice can with …
Cherries, currants and raspberries arrive at such an inconvenient time. It’s hot. It’s often humid. And our old stone house holds the summer heat like a wood-fired brick oven. Once the warm weather has worked its way into the walls, I’m hesitant to fry a …