If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m a fan of the one-dish meal. Fussing about with multiple pots and pans is just not for me, and nor is doing multiple sets of dishes afterward. The way I see it, if something needs a side dish to complete it, how good can it be? Read more…
I want to start this post with a great big Thank You to everyone who left a comment on this post last week. On Wednesday I flew home to Canada for my grandmother’s funeral, and spent the past week visiting with family and friends. Though I’m feeling okay and trying to present an upbeat front, dealing with death is never easy, and your words of support helped more than I can say. Read more…
Lean in close, and I’ll let you in on a shameful little secret of mine: I’ve never successfully made a gratin before now. Absurd, right? The easy-peasy staple of French cooking, winter cooking and (let’s face it) 1950′s home cooking has never been my forté. Until now, that is. Read more…
Some would argue, on reading the title of this post, that these two things are not, in fact, the Perfect Pair. Some might say that too much of a Good Thing is actually Bad, and would possibly even bring up the old adage that Opposites Attract. Read more…
Risotto is one of my favourite things to make. Not only is it delicious and relatively foolproof, but it’s also improbably impressive. Announce to a group of friends that you’re making risotto for dinner and someone is bound to gaze at you in wide-eyed incredulity, regarding this as some kind of domestic tour de force. Read more…
You know how, as food bloggers*, we like to convince our readers that we always eat like this? That beautiful, creative, well thought out and healthy meals grace our tables daily and effortlessly? That we never succumb to take-out pizza, boxed cake mixes or store-bought vanilla extract?
(*I’m addressing this to “food bloggers” because I’m convinced that at least 90% of food blog-readers are food-blog writers, too.) Read more…
Stuffing pasta with cabbage seems like a half-baked idea, I know. For many of us, doing anything with cabbage seems a bit far-out. I used to hate cabbage- well, actually, I used to think I hated cabbage, which is something completely different. We didn’t eat it all that often when I was growing up, so I never really got the chance to decide for myself whether I hated it- but every kid hates cabbage, right? Read more…
I love shrimp, and Andrew and I used to eat them frequently. Lately I’ve been trying to scale us way back, due to certain ethical concerns, as well as the somewhat alarming news that seafood will be off the menu completely within 50 years. So these days we might have one or two meals with shrimp a month, which is pretty much it for our animal intake. Read more…
As might be becoming clear by now, I love a (non-green) salad. Quick to make, versatile and infinitely portable, legume salads are among my favourite. The butter bean version pictured here was yesterday’s lunch, made from leftover cooked beans and gussied up with herbs and cheese. While putting it together, I realized that my salads tend to follow a very specific formula, one that allows for infinite variations on the theme. Read more…
I think I’m in a Mediterranean state of mind, today. Is there such thing as a Mediterranean state of mind? I’m sure there must be. Waking up with the sun in my eyes was probably what did it, and I haven’t been able to shake that “holiday” feeling all day. Read more…
