It has snowed again. Normally, I shrug off the weather. Once, standing on a small boat off the coast of Juneau, Alaska, getting beaten by the ocean water mist, a local said to me, “There is no bad weather. There are only bad clothes.” This was coming from someone who lived in one of the …
Category Archives: kitchen experiments
strawberry jam and polarities.
July is a month of opposites. The intoxicating thrill of hot weather casts a spell of electrifying delirium, but also a stupefying and mind-numbing glaze. Office workers are scant – all having escaped to the lake by Thursday at 2 pm, or at the very least, cool basements – while university students flit by on …
grapefruit season of life.
We didn’t grow up eating grapefruit. In terms of citrus, my family ate oranges, with maybe some mandarins here and there on special occasions. In fact, I don’t think I tasted grapefruit until I was an adult living on my own, and its sharp bitter sourness was initially so shocking that I couldn’t understand how …
slow down soup.
For someone who makes a living off of telling people to slow down and take their time, I feel like I have very little spare time. I am subject to the same pressures as anyone else – the pressure to perform, to hustle, to get this done, that done – you know the drill. Being …
ginger, rediscovered.
This past May we went on a long-anticipated trip to Japan. For three weeks, we walked, ate, observed, photographed, and talked our way through some of the major cities and smaller rural areas. We practised the little phrases of Japanese we had learned (I spent almost an hour trying to perfect my pronounciation of konbanwa, …
summer in winter in January.
It has been an exceedingly warm winter this year. Well, it has been warm for the past week. Before that it was -40 degrees Celsius. I have the memory bank of a meerkat, apparently. More importantly, I have reason to participate in the futile art of complaining about the weather: I had really been enjoying …
ready, aim, slice.
it’s all sourdough love, baby.
Bread was among one of the first things I ever baked, and it was a strange, mysterious and incredibly rewarding experience. Watching the yeast dissolve and grow foamy in sugary water, then the springy aliveness of the dough – it was all so new and exciting. Enamoured with my new hobby, I even wrote a …
seaweed wrap, peanut butter edition.
It would appear that I like to variate on a theme. After all the jollies I got from making raw veggie seaweed wraps, I decided to try another version, but this time make it a little heartier. I give you peanut butter chicken spinach seaweed wraps. Yeah. Yeah! The rice is instant brown rice (sacrilege!) …
homemade ice cream 2.0.
Maybe the dairy is clouding my brain, but I don’t think I’ll ever buy ice cream from the grocery store again. It is so easy and so gratifying to make ice cream from scratch – I think it’s one of the great secret pleasures of life. And you don’t need an ice cream maker. Last …