I was lucky enough to receive two Donna Hay cookbooks for Christmas this year – Instant Entertaining and her newest, No Time To Cook. When I first started browsing cookbook shelves a few years ago, her volumes immediately caught my eye – the full-colour photographs were unlike any I had encountered before. Simple, elegant and beautiful, [...]

No, the actual name of the recipe we made is Toad in the Hole, but I couldn’t resist (especially when there doesn’t seem to be a satisfying explanation of why a dish made with sausages has such a name to begin with).
After our successful meal of red wine-braised sausages, we decided to give another Irvings [...]

Occupation: Professional Educator (BEd) in my 30th year of teaching with Edmonton Public Schools. I am an Early Childhood Specialist (ECE Diploma), with two other “majors”, or specializations: English Literature, and Fine Art (drawing) I am currently teaching Foods, or cooking to about 200 grade 7-9 students every 2 days, for the second year. [...]

In an attempt to reduce our overall meat protein consumption, Mack and I have been deliberately substituting meat alternatives in some of our meals – tofu in stirfrys, chickpeas in pasta, lentils in curries. More than anything, we’ve found the variety quite refreshing, and sometimes even a time saver (lentils, for example, cook in a [...]

Carrots are underappreciated, too often relegated to a mere supporting role in dishes – grated into salads, julienned into stirfrys, sliced into stews. So I was happy to come across two recipes that cast this versatile, humble vegetable into the spotlight.
Recipe 1: Spiced Carrot Soup
A Compliments Magazine recipe for spiced carrot soup was our first [...]

On Chris’s recommendation, our second pizza stone attempt revolved around a Peter Reinhart recipe for dough.
For starters, the recipe made enough dough for four 10 inch pizzas, which meant we had enough dough for another round of pizzas – a future dinner time saver! And though I was worried the dough wouldn’t rise (it didn’t [...]

Our go-to method of cooking fish involves the oven, but lately, it seems we have been over-roasting everything. The dry, chalky flesh that results is unpleasant, and really, a sad waste of good fish. I was more than ready to seek out new cooking methods.
We had tried poaching fish before, using a pot on the [...]

Occupation: I write, edit, do public relations, design websites, and dabble in a little bit of photography.
What did you eat today? Breakfast, snacks and lunch were made up of oatmeal with soy sauce, leftover Chinese food from a banquet dinner (chicken and yi-mein/e-fu noodles), [...]

In search of a rich but fast dinner idea, I remembered the package of gnocchi I had picked up from the Italian Centre a few weeks back (like Foodie Suz, I’m not yet at the stage of attempting my own gnocchi), and an Eric Akis recipe I had bookmarked some time ago.
Even though the directions [...]

I love borrowing cookbooks from the library. And though I am not able to make more than one or two dishes in the time that I have the book (and yes, I usually take advantage of the option of multiple renewals), having time to peruse the recipes helps me determine if it’s a volume I’d [...]