Category: Food & Agriculture
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It’s Just Not Christmas Without Homemade Baileys
Every Christmas since I’ve been an adult, I’ve used my mom’s recipe to make bottle upon bottle of homemade Baileys, which I’ve distributed to friends and neighbours. The original recipe card is so well-used it’s begun to look like an ancient artifact. You’d think I’d have memorized it by now, but every year I pull… Read more
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Julia Child Cooks Thanksgiving Dinner
This is Julia’s house. This is Julia’s kitchen. This is Julia cooking thanksgiving dinner with Jacques Pepin circa 1999. In her house. In her kitchen. Wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. May your year be filled with blessings. Read more
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Caplansky’s Delicatessen Toronto
There is nothing I like better in this world than serendipity, except, perhaps, a great smoked meat sandwich. So there we were at U of T, hungry and cold, and Husband suggested eating at Subway to which I replied with a choice expletive or two. We’re in Toronto, for God’s sake, surely we can do better… Read more
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Unexpected Things You Find in Your Garden
I stand in my robe in the front yard at 7:15am staring at my newly-installed siding, admiring, critiquing, dreaming of spring plantings. The sky is a grim, Vancouver-grey, and every deciduous thing is naked and brown. We inhabit the season of ugliness which refuses to yield to the energetic vibrancy of indigo and goldenrod, my house colours. I don’t… Read more
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Wild Turkeys Make Good Potluck Dishes
As part of the village-wide “Jane’s Walk” festival, we’re having a community potluck this Sunday, May 3rd from noon to 1:30pm at the Burritt’s Rapids Community Hall. Call Paul/Joanne at (613) 859-9116 to register # of attendees and dish (savoury/sweet) ********** John told me he’d be at the blind before 5:00am, so I wasn’t surprised to… Read more
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Food Hub: Wendy’s Country Market
Wendy Banks, Rick Trudeau and their daughter Leigha are sixth- and seventh-generation farmers on their family property in Lyndhurst, Ontario. Wendy and her siblings grew up steeped in the value of land and food, her father, Neil, believing that one day there would be a shortage of both. While his hands worked the soil in the present, he and his wife, Gail, amassed a thousand… Read more
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Arrested Developments
So there I was watching Arrested Development reruns when the Bluth family model home flashed up on screen. It’s the running gag where the turreted McMansion sits alone in desert-like surroundings, where the family lives amongst the staged bowls of plastic fruit waiting for prospective buyers who never come. And I laugh, of course, because it’s… Read more
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Wild Treasure
We crossed the Vermillion River and pulled off onto the shoulder as instructed. “Look for sunny hills,” he told me. “Really, they’re everywhere. I’ve heard it’s a great season.” It was going to be women’s work – girl’s work too – crouched under the July sun, nestled in the shrubby groundcover, squinting for treasure. There were… Read more
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The Drawers of Lola Rosa
I can’t help but stare. The young waiter with curly dark hair and a pencil thin moustache is a dead ringer for my cousin, Paul, a mirror of his youthful days in the ’70’s. It’s uncanny. Turns out he’s from B.C. (we’re getting closer), but not from Kamloops, home of Paul and my extended family.… Read more
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Inscription
Pierre explained that it was customary for guests to write their names on pieces of wood to mark their stash of bottles in Marco and Rod’s cave. So I’ve heard, I nodded. (A charming idea to ascribe such permanence to something so ephemeral.) But we cycled through so much wine that summer that it never… Read more