I don’t understand white pepper. I also don’t really know that much about it. Being not particularly familiar to me, I’ll do what I do with all strange (to me) things, and deem it a ‘Tool of the Devil’. You know, like how Grandpa Simpson describes the Metric System. Apparently it’s black pepper with the […]
Every year, about this time (Late August, September) I do a couple of things: I read, The Closing Down of Summer by Alistair MacLeod. It’s a melancholy reminiscence of a hard-rock miner, touching on all kinds of themes, but the one that I hear is the simple notion of leaving a comfortable existence behind and […]
So typical. I’m not even sure why I was surprised, as this is a regular situation at my mother-in-law’s place. We were up over the weekend closing up the cabin. *sigh* When we left, it was decided that facing yet another awful fast-food meal on the drive home was more than we could handle. My […]
Just like every year for the past several years, some of the families in the neighbourhood got together and ordered tomatoes. Let me be a little more specific: Some of the Italian families who know the value of a basement full of tomato sauce took pity on me and allowed me to ride on their […]
All of a sudden, on Saturday evening, the kids were gone and my wife and I were at loose ends for dinner. Usually we have something on the go but this weekend was not like that. My wife suggested we go to Oca Pastificio, a local restaurant where they make fresh pasta, and only fresh […]
I’m not particularly nostalgic. Wait, never mind, I can’t possibly defend that. I’m not excessively nostalgic. Much better. I had an opportunity to do some work in a city in the centre of the province – Kamloops. Nice place, amazing scenery – it’s actually a desert – gets about 2 inches of rain per year. […]
My wife prefers nectarines to peaches. As in, nectarines are amazing; peaches are, well… OK… I didn’t realize I had a position on such things, but then I was reminded of an afternoon in Paris many, many years ago – probably 1991. I was sitting in a plaza and I bought a couple of peaches […]
Every time I look at a vegetable garden, my first impression is that I just can’t see why anyone would bother. Strange, I know, given the fact that I have a garden myself. Stranger still, given that I know what can come out of a garden. Somehow, I just can’t shake the notion that there […]
Actually there were other cookies. My mother made Lunch Box cookies that were pretty darn tasty, too. …but these! These chocolate chip cookies rule. They are just the right amount of chewy and substantive, with enough oatmeal to make you *think* you’re eating something that isn’t terrible for you. The 4 cups of sugar (but […]
When my family and I visited London last year, a friend insisted that we go to Nopi. He told me that we could sit anywhere – even the basement was fine. And so we made reservations and went. We did end up downstairs, sitting at a massive marble table, surrounded by racks of storage for […]