Tablecloth embroidered by my great-grandmother

I only remember her hands ravaged by age: skin thin and spotted, knuckles gnarled with arthritis. I can still see them working a crochet needle, kneading dough, and wiping the warm wax from the surface of a just-written pysanka. I thought about those hands and the woman they belonged to, my maternal great-grandmother, ...
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Celebrating Grandma and Grandpa’s birthdays, Christmas 2009

This December, my grandparents turned 81 (grandma, on December 21) and 87 (grandpa, on December 24). On Christmas Day, when we sang the birthday song and watched them together blow out the candles on their banana-chocolate-walnut chiffon cake — my grandmother’s recipe, my uncle, the baker, told us — they were barely two weeks ...
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Dinner, at the roll of a die

Sometimes, I just don’t know what to make for dinner.

Such a quandary should be impossible, what with my kitchen bookshelf stuffed with upwards of 100 cookbooks in regular use, my utility closet bulging with food magazines, a blogroll that scrolls on and on through sites showcasing food from all over the world, and an ...
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Creamed chicken and cornmeal porridge (Ciulama de pui si mămăligă)

I’m trying not to take offence.

I realize that the dish my mother’s people are famous for is commonly referred to as “gruel” (a cornmeal gruel, in fact, made simply with meal, water, and a flick of salt), which is not exactly a glamorous calling card. Still, it is rather disheartening to ...
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English lavender in my Aunt Janice’s garden

There’s a magical moment that happens when making lavender limeade. It occurs after you have simmered together water, sugar, lavender blossoms, and lime zest to produce a floral-perfumed simple syrup. It happens after you have sliced a little hill of limes in half and divested them of their pulpy, tangy juice. It happens after ...
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Detail of sandwich board at Lil’ Baci restaurant, Leslieville

Food writing! It only took me 36 years to figure this one out.

When I answered a “food writers wanted” post a few weeks ago, put out by a new blog dedicated to food and drink in Canada, I could only hope that I would be making the following announcement. ...
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Red currants

It is 8:45 a.m. on a Saturday in July. I descend the steps of the 504 streetcar at the intersection of King Street West and Jarvis. As I wait for the light to change to allow me to walk south towards Front Street I observe the knots of people already clogging the sidewalks in amongst the outside vendors at ...
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Coffee blondies

I would make a terrible Got Milk? poster girl.

It wasn’t always this way. For most of my adult life I bought, and consumed, at least a litre of milk every week: I was a dunker of all manner of cookies, a lover of cereal well soaked, a tippler of tall cold ones. But then something happened. I moved in ...
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Pizza with spring toppings and fontina

I choose to view the last year and eight months as a lesson in simplicity, in determining life’s essentials from its frills. As it happens, having a full-sized oven is a frill, but oh — how much sweeter culinary life is when you have one at your disposal.

You might remember that back in March I ...
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Forsythia blossoms, Broadview Avenue

To my mind, forsythia is the quintessence of spring. One of these flowering shrubs grew in the backyard of my first childhood home, and my mom would bring a branch into the house the moment the screaming-yellow flowers popped open. Seeing that spray of blossoms in the kitchen or on the dining-room table was a signal: It ...
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