Having a neighbour who has a zucchini plant is so commonplace that even referring to it as a cliché seems strange, as everyone knows someone who has a zucchini plant. Or, I suppose, everyone knows someone who planted zucchini and ended up with too many to count and had to give them away. They’re incredibly […]
This is one of those great photos (not a great photo, but bear with me, here) where the subject is straightforward but the setting is a little odd. My mom took this photo. I’m on the left. Middle of three kids. My mother didn’t do anything in half-measures, although the other Catholic families in the […]
Facts about avocado toast: It’s tasty. Apparently only Millennials eat it. (and I’m no Millennial. Gen-X, baby. Just like Douglas Coupland.) It has an appalling amount of discussion and furor surrounding it, given that it’s avocado smeared on a piece of toast. From Nigella Lawson being pilloried for offering the recipe in her TV show […]
My mother-in-law’s (Betty’s) specialty. Hang on. I should clarify. It’s her specialty in the same way that making most things in the kitchen is her specialty. Like her huckleberry pie, or any of a zillion other meals she has made over the years. She makes the best French Toast. No idea how she does it, […]
It’s a ton of work. I get to cook with it about two weeks out of every year and as a consequence I have very little experience in figuring out how it works. Practice makes perfect, as they say, and I’m really out of practice. What is more, every time I come back to the charcoal […]
I took this photo to illustrate to a friend the place of honour that his gift of “Everything but the Bagel Sesame Seasoning Blend” has in our household. If you’re wondering where it is – top shelf. Wait, top of the cabinet, in the middle. We don’t have Trader Joes in Canada. For a while […]
I would love to meet the person who figured out you could eat plants. Hm. Maybe that’s a strange thing to say. How about this – I would love to meet the person who figured out that this certain plant was tasty, and that one was toxic. I should like to shake their hand for […]
“You Won’t be Poisoned” This was a standard comment from my mother when we asked what was happening for dinner. “offer it up” was another regular response when any questions were posed about meals, but I’ll leave that for another time. The conversation went like this: Kid: What’s for dinner? Mom: Food, some of which […]
When I make pizza, or, for that matter, make anything that requires tomatoes, I reach for a jar of our passata – which is an Italian word for sauce, except that it isn’t really sauce. Let me explain, if I can. Passata is a product you make by passing cooked roma tomatoes through a mill. […]
I’m eating a really awful sour-cream glazed doughnut while I write this. Hm. Better have another to see if it’s any better… Many years ago I was at the PNE (the local summer fair, here in Vancouver) and I was wandering around with my Hasselblad, taking photos of interesting things. It was a lot of […]