A Nutty Vinaigrette

We took a bit of a circuitous route out west for the holidays. Flying across Canada is fiendishly expensive, so we ended up driving down to Buffalo, flying to Seattle and taking the bus up to Vancouver. In addition to saving us a couple hundred bucks, this journey had the added bonus of enabling us to stop for breakfast at one of our favourite spots in Seattle: Belltown fixture Le Pichet.

Brighten up

Now here’s a salad with some guts. Not the offal kind, but a big, bright and ballsy dressing that will smarten up even the saddest bit of lettuce with bright citrus flavours and tangy capers.

Lighten up

Like everyone else in the universe, we’re starting off the new year by trying to eat a little healthier. Nothing extreme, mind you: our diet isn’t all that bad to begin with, but it never hurts to be more mindful of the things you are putting in your body. So we’ve been spending the last few days trying to eat lighter and drink less.

Trials and Tribulations

I must confess: when it comes to cooking and blogging about cooking, I'm a bit rusty. Getting back into the swing of things has taken a bit longer than I anticipated. In the kitchen, I feel disorganized, out of sorts, like I've misplaced whatever meager skills I once possessed, perhaps accidentally discarding them in the compost bin like so many vegetable peelings. It's not that I'm not into it; more the feeling that I suddenly don't know what I'm doing anymore. So it totally makes sense that I'd try to take on two recipes at the same time on a weeknight.

Warm kale, bacon and potato salad

We’ve seen a lot of kale come through our kitchen this winter. And to be honest, I’m getting a little tired of it: bring me summer and fresh lettuces, dandelion greens, mizuna, arugula and the rest.

But, that’s the future and as long as kale keeps finding its way into our fridge, I’ll keep looking for ways to dress it up.

I made this last week for a quick solo supper and was genuinely surprised as how good it turned out. Of course you can’t go wrong with bacon, but I really liked the way all the flavours came together, especially the little kick of the mustard.

Cabbage patch

I should like cabbage. I’m part-German, part-Ukrainian. I should love cabbage. But I don’t. I associate cabbage with sauerkraut, cabbage rolls and kimchi, dishes I’ve never actually tasted because of the olfactory similarities to hot garbage.

Recently, though, I’ve started to realize that maybe it’s not the cabbage itself that’s the issue. Don’t hate the vegetable, hate the method. So, when half a head of Napa cabbage appeared in our fridge one day, I gave it a tentative sniff and decided to give it a shot.

Kale and hearty

With the Yueltide nearing (we’re not there, but you can see it from here) and with it the usual gorging on baked goods, booze, starch and meats, I thought I’d try to get one (last?) sort-of healthy meal in beforehand.

Housecleaning

This past couple of weeks have been, even by my standards, pretty heavy on the meat and wheat-based beverages. We just came back from a weekend in Montréal and between the Blanche de Chamblay, the Fairmont Bagels, and the Schwartz's, the work week dawned with me feeling more than a little sluggish and bloated. At times like these, a brief dietary digression can go a long way to restoring the balance.

Western Swing

The vacation I mentioned a few weeks back has come and gone. Here’s a few of the food-related highlights from our trip to Edmonton and Vancouver.

Stop for salad

D. has recently started volunteering at The Stop Community Food Centre, one of North America’s first food banks and a vibrant community centre that comes complete with kitchen space and a good-sized working greenhouse.

The Stop’s mission is to use food as a gateway to address issues like poverty, the environment, social isolation, and health in one of Toronto’s lowest-income neighbourhoods. D.’s work with the afterschool program sees her helping kids between 8 and 12 learn about cooking, how to read food labels, with a dash of food politics thrown in. It sounds like a lot of fun, and it’s the kind of gig where I don’t mind if she brings work home with her. This salad she made with the kids on her first day, for example, was a big hit there and at home.

Salad Days

I go through life with a cartoon devil on each shoulder.

"Why eat one square of that Ritter Sport when you can eat the whole goddamn thing?"
"Where do you think you're going with that wine bottle, drinky?"
"Gym, shmym: what's new on Netflix?"

They're jerks.

Of salad and sunshine, and sandals and shorts

I know what you’re thinking. “A salad? All the fuss of starting a new blog and you lead off with a mere salad? Where is the skill? Where is the artistry? Where, and I mean this literally, is the beef?”

If it means anything, I intended to roll out with a bigger splash. A magnificent roast with all the trimmings, perhaps? A delicate tart with neo-Gothic spires of meringue and puff pastry flying buttresses? Alas, it’s been damn hot for the last few days and the last thing I wanted to do on a sunny Sunday afternoon was stand in a sweltering kitchen just to come up with that special dish to feed my new blog baby.

In my defense, this is a really, really good salad. It’s hard to beat a combination that includes crispy bacon, fresh tomatoes and avocados and juicy roast chicken, consumed in a patch of sunlight on a July afternoon.