I love problems … love finding solutions to impossible predicaments. Challenges beget curiosity and creativity and they fill me with resolve…. Each New Year doesn’t in-and-of-itself present a problems to me: it provides a 365¼ day tableau on which to create life. And, other than when I’m actually writing, there is nothing I love doing…
Traditional Tourtière
Some traditions run deep …. A few weeks ago, I broke with French-Canadian tradition and created a vegetarian tourtière and wrapped it in a gluten-free crust that stole the show. While the French-Canadian in the family loves her whole grains and veggies, she isn’t a vegetarian and she couldn’t for the life of her figure…
Morning Frost Light Trees
Ice Storm Trees
An Untraditional Canadian Christmas: Vegetarian Tourtière
I believe in Christmas and I believe in the power of tradition. For me, the power of Christmas, and the true spirit of it, is beautifully wrapped up in O. Henry’s masterful short-story “The Gift of Magi.” In this story first published more than a century ago, O. Henry beautifully shows the power of giving…
Vegetarian Tourtière
I probably will go to hell for this …. I acknowledge, that despite this being a Christmas dish, the fact that I’ve taken the traditional French Canadian meat pie and made it without, well, ‘meat’ may add fodder to the national unity to debate (again). I want to assure everyone that my Canada not only includes…
Harvesting an Identity
Long has the harvest been an important part of my life and long has it been associated with fall, bountiful cornucopias of food, and Thanksgiving. Growing up in the Okanagan Valley, the fall harvest meant picking the last of the fruit and stripping our garden of its remaining plenty before tilling the vegetation back into…
Maple-Apple Jelly
At its most fundamental level, cooking is pure chemistry and physics. At its most profound, it is art, tradition, culture, identity and love. Nothing arguably combines both as purely as making preserves. Thus when I took up the most recent challenge in The Canadian Food Experience Project chose to make it personal, I found myself with the challenge…
Preserving: Our Canadian Tradition
I grew up among trees. Indeed, trees define a huge part of our national identity – and our food – in this country. Speak to any foreigner about their image of Canada and it will almost universally be of “wilderness” and the wide expanse of mountains, water, open spaces, and trees. Growing up, everywhere I…
Le festibière d’hiver … the Winter BeerFest
So, a week late isn’t too late, right? As you may have recalled from a few posts leading up to it, January 24-26 was Le festibière d’hiver … the Winter BeerFest. This was Gatineau’s follow up to their inaugaral winter event a year ago which I didn’t find out about until too late. This year,…