When I was growing up, I thought in very simple terms: salads consisted of lettuce, pasta, or (super ick!) Jell-O. On any given night in my childhood, my mum would always have a salad to accompany supper which was composed of iceberg lettuce, sliced beefsteak tomato, and cucumbers (it also wasn’t a salad if it wasn’t topped with Kraft Zesty Italian salad dressing, it was the 1980s after all). One of the most important things about humans is our Continue reading “Book Club Tuesday: Linger”
“Pattern over plate” (3)
Recently I was sent a copy of Desiree Nielsen’s Plant Magic and, immediately I was interested in her approach because she is a plant-based (vegan) recipe developer and registered dietitian (click on the link to see what this credential means in Canada, where Nielsen is based). She uses her professional knowledge of nutrition to inspire home cooks – for Nielsen, it’s about a lifetime of good nutritional patterns rather than feeling bad or Continue reading “Book Club Tuesday: Plant Magic”
Much of what drives me forward as a cook is the desire to preserve those warm feelings of family and home that I experienced as a child, eating meals so lovingly made by my family. Food connects us to each other and to all the home cooks that came before – and, what I’ve found reading through Sophie Kaftal and Bobby Zielinski’s Kitten and the Bear Cookbook is that they’re not only preserving the sweet and most delicious offerings from gardens and orchards, they’re maintaining and building a “…fairy tale life full of beauty, tradition, and the art of daily ritual.”(2) For those who have Continue reading “Book Club Tuesday: Kitten and the Bear Cookbook”
The parents of my daughter’s classmates know that one of my favourite things to ask when we’re standing around at after school pick up is: What’s for dinner? I’ve always been deeply curious to know what the go-to meals are, which are the favourites, or what are the dishes families fall back on when moments are busy (it feels like we’ve hit that age where the time after school is populated by myriad activities). As Jillian Harris and Tori Wesszer know, a good recipe gives us not only a delicious meal to share but it can also Continue reading “Book Club Tuesday: Fraiche Food, Fuller Hearts”
I always have my ear to the ground when it comes to what home cooks – particularly the ones who are cooking for a family – want from their cookbooks. Since my daughter started school many years ago, I love talking to other parents about what they’re making for lunches or cooking for dinner. There’s always such variety – some people meal plan and grocery shop accordingly, some people (like me) make meals based on the ingredients they have in the moment, and Continue reading “Book Club Tuesday: Love & Lemons: Simple Feel Good Food”
There are moments in life that, at first, seem ordinary or transient but as time passes, you realize it was the beginning of something special. Over 5 years ago, on the advice of someone who followed me on Instagram, I bought myself a copy of Neighbourhood – Hetty Lui McKinnon’s second cookbook. I already knew of Hetty’s food from her delicious-looking Continue reading “Book Club Tuesday: Tenderheart”
There’s something undeniably attention-grabbing about a “Best of” list. 2022 is ending and, people want to know about the noteworthy cookbooks. This year I’m going to try something a little different – not quite a gift guide, yet not a “Best of” list either. Where I want to go with this post is simple – help home cooks find a little joy in their kitchens. Joy is what moves me forward and, it’s never steered me wrong when I’m talking about cookbooks (it was one of the favourite parts of my conversation I had with Lindsay Cameron Wilson on her The Food Podcast this year (link here). However, my joy may not necessarily be someone else’s joy because we all have our own personal set of criteria concerning joyful kitchen experiences. So, through the next 8 sections, I’ll briefly discuss some of the books that stood out to me this year. For any books that I’ve already reviewed, I’ll add a link so that you can visit that review for more information. There will be books I haven’t reviewed yet but still deserve a mention. Continue reading “Joy and Cooking: The Cookbooks of 2022”
When a copy of Brian Levy’s Good & Sweet arrived in the mail, I felt leery about the subject matter. To be honest, I am tired of the narrative of sugar being unhealthy – has there ever been a time when someone ate sugar because it was healthy? I find that these narratives set up sugar as a false opposite – while refined sugar is “bad,” books go on to convince home cooks of the Continue reading “Book Club Tuesday: Good & Sweet”
It’s been said, many times before, food brings us together, and there is nothing better than being able to share a good meal or a tasty dish with our loved ones. Hannah Sunderani knows this ethos well and, when coming up with a name for her blog, she wanted people Continue reading “Book Club Tuesday: The Two Spoons Cookbook”
“…when we sat down in that coffee shop and laid out our bakery dreams to each other, they were really about creating a space we wanted to go to every day. To build something that would address as many of the systemic issues we had seen in our own bakery jobs as possible. A place to foster creativity and feminist ideals. A business that would give more than it would take from the community and that centred sustainability in all its decisions. The results have not always been what we intended, and we are still learning how the systems in which we operate affect our biases and how we can continue to be better. It has been a financial challenge. Trying to operate in an effectively non-profit way in a capitalist system is fraught with compromises and disappointments. Luckily, we are resourceful folks and have had the honour of working with many amazing people over the years, so we feel like we have won the life lottery.” (4)
Over a decade ago, Nickey Miller and Josie Rudderham opened the brick-and-mortar version of Cake & Loaf in Hamilton, Ontario and now, they have a newly published cookbook (of the same name) to share with home bakers. I’m new to the Cake & Loaf world but as I read through the introduction, I learned that Continue reading “Book Club Tuesday: Cake & Loaf”
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