My Goodness! No Guinness!
March 17, 2008
The last of Canada: Toronto
November 21, 2007
Question:
What do you do with 26 green heirloom tomatoes harvested early to protect them from frost?
Montreal post 1: Bagels and Borscht
October 30, 2007
I’m back in Canada again. Don’t ask, it’ll just make you sad. And strangely - instead of being in Toronto with my family, I’m in Montreal (a city I lived in for five years … five years ago) having a mini-vacation. Again, don’t ask - suffice to say, in two days I’m heading to Toronto to take care of some sad family affairs.
But for now, I’m making lemonade with lemons, visiting old friends and old eating favourites, and it’s interesting to hunt down my previous tried and true eating experiences on a cold, 5-year-old trail. This seems to have affected bar selection most, but I had a few nasty surprises when I tried to track down that old hole-in-the-wall eating place only to find it closed. Fortunately, there appear to be some institutions that continue to stand the test of time.
Rootbeer and Rips in the Space/Time Continuum
October 21, 2007
So I’ve been playing with time a little bit in my last few postings - first I was in London, then Canada, then Nantwich, and now we’re returning to Canada for a brief almost-interlude with a beverage I must live without for approximately 11 months of the year: rootbeer.
I thought about adding a new cryptic category to our blog: “Big Yellow Taxi.” Sing a few lines to yourself and perhaps you’ll understand what I mean, but basically I wanted a category for celebrations of things I can’t get wherever I am. It’d be a big category, as both N and I have traveled a lot - and to be honest, no matter how good the food is wherever I am, I’m always missing food I can get somewhere else.
Morning Coffee: The Oft Overlooked Necessity
October 9, 2007
I have a new job, dear-readers. With it has come a new commute, and although I could view this new commute as a new soul-destroying trudge, I prefer to see it as a new trail to blaze within London, with new delights to discover along the way.
One of the most pleasant has been the sight of the two ‘caffe mobiles’ which await me every morning as I exit Highbury & Islington Station. My new commute is much longer, and after exiting the station I have about a 15- to 20-minute walk before arriving at my office. The caffe mobiles, like shining beacons of Italian civilization, serve as a pleasant rest stop and mental refueling station as I make my way towards the start of my day.
Green Tomatoes Tickle Me Pink
August 9, 2007
The tomatoes in my garden are beginning to ripen!!!
Look at those little nubules of amazing sweet flavour with their baby peach fuzz. I want to hug and kiss them and sing to them before bed.
In reality, I’ve ignored them, planted them too close together, diddled them with excessive force to ensure pollination, and let them get droopy from too much sun and too little water.
Congratulations
July 31, 2007
iStockphoto via NPR
My sweet-natured mother sends me sheer tons (or tonnes, as B gets to say. Lucky duck) of articles via email. They generally fall into one or two categories I have chosen to call Look, The President is a Dangerous Moron and Look Who Has a Rhodes Scholarship! Not You.
Many of these come from npr.org, and since my mother haunts the website, I wasn’t surprised to see another article from it in my inbox last week. But this, dear readers, was different.
“Something Old, New, Pickled and Blue,” reads the title of Molly Wizenberg’s July 25 column. Some of you hoarier internetters may know Molly from her blog, Orangette, which I’ve always thought exudes a vintage kind of sweetness. I mean that wholly as a compliment: reading Molly’s thoughts on food, love, and life, not to mention seeing her photographs, makes me somehow wish that I was a wholesome soul who ate hoarhound candy and wiped my face with gingham handkerchiefs.
The article concerns Molly’s discovery of all things pickled and briny, and the person who helped her do so: her new husband, Brandon. There are recipes tacked to the story’s end, including one for pickled prunes with orange zest that I can’t wait to try. Each of the recipes is from a dish Molly and Brandon prepared themselves and served at their wedding—yowza.
Heartfelt congratulations to the both of them!
Celestial
July 23, 2007
The food worshiper in me felt a tad pious when I opened up Serious Eats to find this post.
Semifreddo a la Kartavirya Arjuna, except not villainous. What’s not to love?
Of Solace and Tin Foil
July 21, 2007
Throughout our lives, we cook for so many different reasons. Usually, it’s because we are hungry. But I, like other foodies, cook for many more reasons than mere survival. I cook because I’m bored, because I want to create something, or because I want to eat something I can’t afford to buy in a restaurant.
This past week, my vacation in the North of Canada was cut short, as my family and I had to go to Toronto because my grandmother had had a stroke. As I threw clothes haphazardly into a suitcase for the plane, I felt helpless and awkward. I was happy to be going closer to my family, but I felt like I would be in the way; simply another body crowded next to the hospital bed, waiting to see what happened. When your grandmother has 6 children who all now have their own spouses and children — places get crowded very easily.
My only solution was to throw food at the problem. I appointed myself head kitchen replacement, cooking not only for the random bodies that appeared each night for dinner, but preparing frozen meals for my grandfather to consume after we had left.
Chipster Envy
June 23, 2007
This first post rides in on the coattails of an epicure’s tragedy; I and my wisdom teeth were parted yesterday, and I can only eat things that are the texture of baby food. Even the banana I mashed into this morning’s yogurt was a struggle. I found myself panting halfway through the bowl, like a benchwarmer jock in a lacrosse game, and eventually had to scoop out and discard anything on the chunk continuum.
Adding temptation to injury were the seven or so bags of uniquely flavored potato chips my friend B, who is visiting from London, brought as a present. Seeing them on the cupboard shelf is the worst kind of torture. I love potato chips more than many things, even things to which I’m devoted—bangle bracelets, mass transit, coffee ice cream. I’d barter them all for some Lays down at the trading post without batting an eye.
These particular British examples (I am fighting the urge to call them crisps, because that is so tired and so 2002 Study Abroad) are even more tempting than fairness would mandate, because they come in cracktastic flavor combinations unavailable in the standard New York grocery store: Oven Roasted Chicken with Lemon & Thyme, Flame Grilled Steak, Thai Sweet Chili, Prawn Cocktail, and more.
Witness the treasures.
