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Girl Time





Summer just wouldn’t be complete without at least one "girl weekend" with Andrea in Ottawa. I hadn’t been in a few years due to unforeseen circumstances, but this summer I was determined to get there. Come hell or high water I was getting on a train and trekking to our country’s capital for a weekend.

Between the lingering discussions over coffee (at least 3 hours on Sunday morning) and the Olympic-style patio-lounging on Saturday sipping Kir Royales, we didn’t really do much at all. We did manage to venture through the market ooh-ing and ahh-ing over all the amazing looking fruits and vegetables and purchased many delicious snacks to indulge in.

Saturday afternoon was spent relaxing in her backyard, sipping sangria and enjoying the nibbles we’d purchased earlier that day. We even managed to throw together a delicious barbecue dinner for three very hungry boys who showed up somewhat unexpectedly.

On Sunday I finally got to see their new house, which Andrea’s husband has been diligently renovating for at least a year. It is absolutely beautiful too – from the enormous kitchen to the lovely three-season porch to all of the striking turn-of-the-century details. I really wish I had taken pictures.

It was an amazing weekend – full of good conversation, incredible food and lots of relaxation; just what a Domestic Goddess needs. I could do with a weekend like that again already – and in fact we are planning one for the fall or early winter. I’ve only ever been to Ottawa in the summer so I am looking forward to going when the weather is cooler. If anyone has any thoughts on what you simply must do in Ottawa in the fall, please let me know!

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Summer Sentimentality



I am having a torrid love affair and I’m all hot and bothered by it.

Let me at least try to explain… The affair began on Canada Day, July 1st. And no, it had nothing to do with "Mmm… Canada", I promise. Since that afternoon it has carried on, much to my dear husband’s vexation. You see, he knows…and he is tormented by it.

I can’t help it and I will keep on with it until the flame dies out. You’d be sure to notice its effects if you took one look at me, walking down the street, smiling like a crazy person while the sun blinds me, my clothes stick to my skin and the heat addles my brain. I’m in love and I quite simply cannot get enough.

Both S. and Leith are plagued with sleeplessness while I on the other hand, sleep like a baby – could it be the effects of my wandering heart? Neither of them can comprehend why this love makes me so happy, and strangely neither is insistent that I give it up. They just wish I wouldn’t gush about it quite so often.

This forbidden love of which I speak? The hot, humid weather of the summer. I have a renewed love of warm weather, of summer and of being outside. I think I spent too many months indoors last year and my body is just now getting used to the idea that I do not have to confine myself to a hospital room for the next three months. Recently S., Leith and I were at the beach, watching the ducks, wading in the water and simply enjoying the summer weather. That was when I fell in love. I actually stopped, hugged and kissed S. and told him how happy I am, just to be outside. I know, I’m crazy, but you don’t know what you have until you lose it, and sometimes you don’t know what you’ve lost until you get it back again.

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Mmm… Gardening





After reading about everyone’s home-grown Canadian goodness this past week I was inspired to plant my own tiny version in my backyard. I have been longing for a backyard garden of my very own for a long time and this year I was finally granted both a yard and some dirt in order to make this Domestic Goddess’s dream come true.

I had decided to wait until S. and my brother had had a chance to get the fence built. This fence may have taken a while but it sure is a thing of beauty, even without the gates on. S. and I are both very proud of our wee house with its teeny backyard and this gorgeous fence.

So yesterday all of a sudden I found myself standing in the middle of a garden centre, Leith loading up the bottom "shelf" of the garden cart, and me loading up the top. I managed to convince him in the end that we only needed one purple basil plant and no Geraniums, but it was a positive outcome over all. He can be very helpful in garden centres it turns out – I never would have found the tomatoes if it weren’t for him pointing at all the little yellow, red and green fruits (vegetables?) saying "ball! ball!".

So we brought home a small flat of plantables and S. told me it was up to me to do the dirty work. So this morning while he and Leith were out running errands and visiting Aunties I dug my fingers into some seriously black earth and planted my little heart out.

Just think of all the amazing dishes that will be enhanced by my fresh thyme, basil, chives, tomatoes and hot peppers. I searched and searched for rosemary but there was none to be found. We might have to head out again today so I can get some at another nursery.

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Backyard Delights



On warm summer evenings there are very few things that beat the flawless combination of good friends, good weather and good eats. Back yard entertaining is one of my favourite ways to spend time during the entirely too few warm months in Canada. Growing up, a large backyard was something we took for granted as kids. We always had a place to play, a place to picnic, a place to pitch a tent and play at "camping". Even though we lived smack in the middle of busy, crowded, downtown Toronto we always had that shady, comfortable, large oasis at our beck and call.

I don’t think I truly appreciated how good we had it back then until S. and I bought our own house this past fall. We love our little house and are absolutely crazy about living in Leslieville (we are close to everything: Little India, the Beach, Queen East, TTC, and only about a 12-minute drive from the downtown core), but we realized this spring that something very important was missing.

We don’t actually have a back yard.

Well, we do have a rather petite rectangle of grass behind our house that S. has been working hard to keep neatly mowed. Recently we have been making very big plans for what (hopefully) will be in no time, our own wee sanctuary. Once we have a fence built, the barbecue S. received as a Father�s Day gift will come out of its box, the lawn chairs will come out of the basement and Leith will be �set free� in his very own outdoor space to play, picnic and pitch a tent.

Once all the bits and pieces come together we will of course host a backyard barbecue with friends, food and fun overflowing. I have some very good backyard-friendly recipes already but only recently have I come up with a worthwhile coleslaw recipe. Because honestly, what good are homemade burgers, grilled corn with chipotle butter and margaritas without a delicious bowl of chilled coleslaw�???

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My Dearest Leitho





You are now two years old and I think it is high time I started writing letters to you. This will be my very first one. Please forgive me if I babble on incoherently or if I reveal anything truly embarrassing, I am still new to this whole thing (writing about motherhood, the act of motherhood, you name it).

You are asleep right now, in your very own bed in your very own room upstairs. You had an active day (helping your father dig holes in the backyard, helping me make dinner, playing with the hose in the back yard and drawing some rather interesting renditions of all of your beloved family members and friends with your crayons) and I was not surprised to see you drift off to sleep on the way home in the car.

You are an excellent sleeper. Sometimes I watch you sleep. I come into your room at night to check on you and your face mesmerizes me. You are completely at peace when you sleep and so utterly beautiful it makes my heart hurt. I run my hand over your forehead and your nose wrinkles up for about two seconds and then your face lapses into its delicate baby curves once again.

Those curves are disappearing now that you are two (terrible two!) and you are turning into a little boy. This morning I looked at you and was sad for a brief moment. Sad that you are no longer that mewling little bundle that was totally dependent upon me for every need. Sad that you are growing so quickly it is difficult to keep up with the changes. At the same time I was overjoyed to note that you are learning things faster than you did even just a few months ago. I was pleased that you are becoming independent ("no" is one of your favourite words), even though it means daily small accidents (you fell and split your lip open the other day and scared your poor father half-to-death).

To put it bluntly, you amaze me. You amaze me daily with your pure joy and your compassion. You thrill me with your love and devotion. You impress me with the new skills you are learning and the old ones you are retaining. You are, in short, the centre of my world.

At least once a week someone asks me if I want to have more kids; I suppose I am at the point and age where a second child would be welcomed. If I could have more I would have to consider it very seriously, because I know you would be the most amazing older brother in the world. But since that is a blessing I am unable to accept I am happy to say that you are more than enough child for me. While you make me want to have a dozen children just like you, you also give me reason to never have another because no one could ever measure up to you. You’ve spoiled me for other kids little man…and, I think, spoiled a few of your aunties in this regard as well.

I will stop rambling on now…and end this (my first!) letter to you.

Happy Birthday my little munchkin man…I love you very much.

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One True Love

One of the very first true loves of my adult life was an older man. Correction: a rather tall, lanky older man, who happened to be missing a few of his more significant front teeth. I have always been a sucker for those hunky Canadian hockey players…

Tim Horton was a professional hockey player, and in 1949 signed on to play with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Over the next 20 years he worked on the kind of career that got him inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1977, three years after his death in a car accident. Before he left us, Horton started his doughnut and coffee shops; of which there are over 2,200 outlets in Canada and the northeastern U.S. today.

What you get at “Timmy�s” is certainly not gourmet coffee, and you certainly can’t order a ‘skim milk latte’ or an ‘espresso con panna’. Their coffee is very plain and very simple, but it is delicious. I’ve had many Saturday morning discussions over Tim’s coffee and doughnuts about what they could possibly be putting into their coffee to make it so addictive. Being the poor detective that I am, I think it all boils down to quality coffee and fresh brewing, plain and simple. And that simple formula has worked for them.

My relationship with this brawny hockey player began in the summer of 1990. I was working for my father, painting hallways and stairwells in a condo in Scarborough, just outside Toronto proper, saving up money for university. My older brother was working with me and he introduced me to the coffee shop around the corner. Every morning we would go to the drive-through with my dad, who ordered us each a coffee (small with milk only for my dad, a large double-double for Dave, and a large with a-little-coffee-with-my-cream-and-loads-of-sugar for me) along with a pack of Tim-Bits for sharing. This was the breakfast of champions and hallway painters, alike.

Now, fifteen years later Tim Horton’s is still my coffee house of choice – I am always hoarding little piles of $1.46 in change (S. has no idea where all the coins from his pockets disappear to!) for my morning caffeine fix. Luckily for me there is a Tim’s in the hospital where I work. There are also two within walking distance from my parent’s house – so I’m always calling ahead to find out what people want when I stop on my way. While my dad still has a small with milk, David has stopped drinking coffee altogether and I have switched to milk only in mine. But the coffee remains the same – and for my money the doughnuts rival Krispie Kreme’s any day of the week… but especially this month, because it’s Mmm…Canada this month and Tim Horton’s is Canadian, through and through (even if it happens to be American-owned).

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I’m No Food network star

My Life, in a Nutshell

Or to put it simply, “Why I Could Never Be the NEXT FOOD NETWORK STAR…”

When I was very young my father crowned me with the nickname “Murphy”, as in “Murphy’s Law”: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. I was, to put it mildly, “accident prone”. Actually, accidents followed me around like dark shadows, turning up when I’d least expect them, ruining perfectly good days.

When I was three I was up at my cottage and my brother had broken a juice glass on the floor of the kitchen. My mother cleaned up all of it (she thought) but my foot somehow managed to find the one piece she had missed. It embedded itself into my foot and I ended up in the emergency room a few days later waiting to have it removed (for which I received a pretty pink balloon…my brother was jealous).

At the ripe old age of 4 my brother (still jealous) sat me down on the kitchen floor and gave me a horrific hair cut. To this day I fear haircuts and anyone bearing scissors in the kitchen.

When I was six I tugged on the kitchen door at the cottage and the glass window fell out of it, nearly slicing off my right thumb. No emergency room this time, just a big bowl of hydrogen peroxide and a clean dish towel for a bandage. I have nerve damage in that hand and am still upset I never got a pretty pink balloon to make my brother jealous. Entering that kitchen still gives me the heebee-geebies.

At the age of eight my brother (jealous much?) whirled me around the grocery store in a shopping cart and tipped it over (with me still in it). Now I become somewhat traumatized when I walk through the doors of any large grocery store…it makes shopping a nuisance to say the least.

At 19 a good friend cooked me dinner but the chicken was slightly undercooked and I ended up sick in bed for over a week…minus one good friend. To this day I am a bit paranoid when it comes to cooking chicken.

When I was 27 I was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder. A very similar disorder is caused by e. coli so I am a bit overly cautious when I cook ground beef…to the point of burning it sometimes.

Recently I wanted to make myself a cup of tea. I turned the stove on, walked out of the kitchen and made a telephone call. I returned to my kitchen to find the stove on fire and the room filled with thick grey smoke. I had turned on the wrong burner, on top of which was an old tea towel. I think you can guess the result…the house still smells funny to me and I have left the tea-making to S.

So those are my flaws (a few of them anyway), do with them what you will. But if you’re going to think ill of me for them perhaps you should examine your own past in your own kitchen(s). For your effort I will award one The Next Food Network Star prize package to the most disastrous (but believable) kitchen horror story you can come up with.

Please send me an email before June 2nd with your tragic story and I will choose the best (worst) and post it on Tuesday June 3rd. The prize package, courtesy of The Next Food Network Star includes the following:

1. Cookbook – “Bobby Flay’s Grill It!”
2. Food Network Keychain
3. Next Food Network Star Poster
4. Next Food Network Star Postcard
5. Next Food Network Star T-shirt

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Tarting it Up




My fingertips are red from all the strawberries I have been eating lately. Once spring begins to bring the fresh, warm breezes to tickle my cheek and the sun begins to stream through the windows early in the morning I begin to reach for berries…especially of the “straw” variety.

I can eat them freshly washed with the stems still intact. I love them dipped in white or dark chocolate. Filled with sweetened cream cheese, with ice cream or angel food cake. I love them in breads, in pancakes and in milkshakes. They’re delicious in pie, cobbler and coffee cake. You name it, strawberries make it better.

When at an Italian restaurant one evening a few summers ago I ordered a light dessert after an amazing, but a little heavy meal. The waiter had suggested a bowl of fresh strawberries with a little brown sanding sugar and some perfectly aged balsamic vinegar. I had never had this combination before and I was a bit surprised at the flavours. Once you get past the initial thought of vinegar on berries it is all good. The flavours play off of each other so magically it’s almost hard to believe you would ever eat the two separately again.

When I had three pints of strawberries languishing in my fridge recently I kept thinking back on that wonderful dessert. I also remembered a bottle of white balsamic vinegar that was begging to be used in a delicious, interesting recipe. Pairing white balsamic with a beautiful, unctuous custard was the best thing I’ve done in some time.

Next time I’m making balsamic ice cream and serving it with strawberries…that says delicious to me!

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Leisurely Breakfast


Now that I am back at work weekends are so much more important to me. Those extremely short two days (whatever happened to the thought of a hour-day work week??) are when I get to spend REAL time with Leith and S. It is when I can relax a bit, rather than just buzzing around, attempting to get out the door as I tend to do on week day mornings. Weekends are spent doing all the household tasks that pile up during the week like laundry and vacuuming and gardening (now that it is *almost* warm enough!). Saturday and Sunday are the only days I really get to cook and bake because I’m simply too tired to do so when I get home from work. Weekends are so much more busy now, but that goes without saying I suppose.

Because our Sunday mornings can be pretty laid back (we tend not to get out of the house much before Leith gets up from his nap at 1pm!) I try to treat Leith and S. (and myself) to a nice, leisurely breakfast. Sometimes it is French Toast, other times it is Fruit-Filled Pancakes…whatever we eat it’s delicious and much more of a treat than the toast or cereal or apple-on-the-run that tends to be our speedy weekday fare.

Lately I have been on an apple kick. I don’t know how it happened, but I’ve been eating one everyday (let’s hope it keeps the doctor away!) and I have been wanting to make lots of apple dishes as well. The recent Apple Cake was so good I went out and bought a huge 10 pound bag of apples and everyday I am dreaming up more and more apple desserts and snacks for us. If you have a favourite apple recipe, please do let me know about it – I can always use more!

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Me Without Mittens

Something happens to me this time of year…for some reason I become giddy and full of energy as the days become longer and grow just a little bit warmer. It might be the promise of better times ahead (it’s been a tough fall and even tougher winter) or the idea of seeing all the trees begin to bud. Perhaps it is the idea of paring down the wardrobe to one sweater (rather than three) and one jacket (rather than two) and wearing shoes rather than boots once the weather starts to pick up. It may even be the lovely long weekend coming up that revolves around food and chocolate and candy and family. It may be the nearness of my birthday… I can’t quite put my finger on what it is exactly but I am pretty pumped about spring finallycoming.

Spring is looming. You can feel it on the street when the breeze blows just a bit lighter and slightly warmer. It is right around the corner, just waiting to surprise you with melting snow everywhere and kids (including my own) jumping in every puddle they come across. The stores are stocked with Easter decorations and candies and April is less than two weeks away. Spring is without a doubt on its way.

I practically live off of soups and stews during the cold winter months. Heavy, meat and vegetable-laden concoctions that have oodles of time to simmer on the stove while I huddle inside of a pile of sweaters. But once the temperatures start to run upwards and the sweaters start to come off I still crave the comfort of soups…just on the lighter, greener side. Soups like this one keep me hopeful that spring is just around the corner and keep me warm down to my toes until the temperature outside warms up a bit more.