The Canadian Food Experience: English Cucumbers

The Canadian Food Experience: English Cucumbers

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, 

Improv Recipe: Garden Greens Pasta Sauce with Tomatoes

Improv Recipe: Garden Greens Pasta Sauce with Tomatoes

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 

Garlic Scape Soup

Garlic Scape Soup

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 

Honeysuckle Sorbet

Honeysuckle Sorbet

Right outside my kitchen porch, a graceless post stands cemented in the ground. Its thick, square bulk is so awkward it can’t be passed off as rustic. Ferns and periwinkle hide its base while a honeysuckle vine attempts to disguise the rest of its towering 

Hazelnut Gelato for Father’s Day

Hazelnut Gelato for Father’s Day

I have my Father’s nose. I also inherited his high cheekbones and strong immune system. However, his natural math abilities and infinite patience must have skipped a generation. My father can add up a column of figures in his head before I can punch the 

Strawberry Sour cream ice Cream

Strawberry Sour cream ice Cream

Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream This post was originally part of the Canadian Food Experience Project. As I update my recipes, I’m separating stories from instruction. As a result, you’ll find a recipe-free story in my Sunday Story section. Just look for Strawberry Sins. Years 

No-Bake, Dairy-Free Berry Pudding

No-Bake, Dairy-Free Berry Pudding

One rainy summer day, unable to build blanket forts on the climbing bars or soar through the sprinkler on a tire swing, I decided my younger sister and I should do some baking. “Baking” meant raiding Mom’s pantry and dumping everything within reach into a 

Nigella’s Green Beans with Pistachio Pesto

Nigella’s Green Beans with Pistachio Pesto

To paraphrase from Nigella Lawson’s latest book Nigellissima: Easy Italian-Inspired Recipes, this dish is “verdiglorious.” Green basil, green beans, and green pistachios all come together in a “riot” of a pesto dish. What it lacks in authenticity, it more than makes up for in colour 

Spirited Fruit (and Sangria)

Spirited Fruit (and Sangria)

I am not to be trusted. I head to the Farmers’ Market with a clearly written list and rock solid resolve. And what do I return with? Way more items than intended and a feeling of panic. Where will I store all these plums? When