Who can turn down the recipe for a side dish that takes 15 minutes to prepare? No one! This is especially true during the summer when the last thing anyone wants to do is stay cooped up in the kitchen while everyone enjoys mojitos on the deck. We want to join the party too.
S'mores are a great campfire tradition across our country, but sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate.
I promised my kids marshmallows, chocolate, and crackers cooked over an open flame last weekend and then the skies opened up. The rain went on and on and on for so long I considered trading our car for a dingy. So, while I was browsing the internet I came across 1001 ways to make s'mores that don't involve a tent, or mosquitos, or even a fire.
Let's not pretend eating cheese asparagus fries will replace the pleasure of biting into a hot, crispy french fry straight from the deep fryer, seasoned with just the right amount of salt, or maybe topped with a scoop of cheese curds and a generous portion of home-made gravy. Too many of those pleasures and not enough balance leads to a closet full of clothes that pinch in all the wrong places, and so we eat asparagus. Besides, asparagus is the harbinger of spring, the promise that warmer days are coming, EVEN WHEN MOTHER NATURE IS CLEARLY NOT ADHERING TO THE PLAN.
Coq au vin literally means rooster in wine, and came about as an inexpensive and simple way to feed an entire family in France during lean years. Coq au vin could be made with whatever (cheap) vegetables were on hand, and it was also a way to use up chickens who were past their prime by letting them slowly soften in wine. Wine has that effect on a lot of us.
You've decided to add juicing to your arsenal for operation Let's Kick Some Ass in 2015, and you are going to love it! Juicing is a great complement to eating home-cooked, balanced meals — with occasional treats thrown in — and adding more movement into our days. Juicing provides an immediate supply of nutrients straight to your body and you should notice a boost to your energy levels.
One of the best ways to get kids eating what we cook for them is to have them help us in the kitchen. But only on occasion, because any more than that and no one would ever eat a hot meal. If they make it, they will eat it. If you make it, they might scrunch up their noses. It's one of the tenets of parenting.
Canadians love their celebrities as much as the next guy — albeit in a polite way — and once we've welcomed people into our homes on a weekly basis, they become friends. At least, that was my thinking when I met Lynn Crawford and three other celebrities asked to design their ideal home kitchens by IKEA.
If you play your cards right, and you're willing to share the goods, you may get lucky in the kitchen when you serve up an Irish-inspired old family favourite.
Julia Child was the original Kitchen Goddess. She bridged the gulf between Michelin-starred restaurants and home kitchens with her (fairly simple) recipes even when the pros mocked her efforts. But Julia had time to be a kitchen goddess because that was her thing.
There are two product staples in my kitchen typically associated with Thai cooking — or in my case, Lao cooking — but I keep them handy for many other types of recipes, too. Fish sauce and coconut milk sit alongside the more "typical" condiments and I use them almost as frequently.
We could all use an extra dose of sunshine, especially this time of year. But what's a person to do when daylight begins just as the kids get on the school bus and lasts only long enough to get home from work and take the dog for a pee around the block?
Simplicity is the key for most good things in life and that includes what happens in the kitchen. What's easier than a hunk of warm baguette, fresh berries, and a half wheel of Brie? Nothing! And those three make a perfect picnic, especially for an afternoon lazing under a parasol on a quiet Ontario beach.
Okay, maybe the daydreams have taken hold, BUT THE COLD'S GOTTEN TO ME, PEOPLE, and I'm <this> close to waving the white flag.
Rice pudding — the way every mother in France makes it — is simple and lighter than its creamy counterpart, since there it is traditionally cooked in milk. It's one of those dishes that serves double duty as dessert following a light salad meal or as an after school snack.
There are two camps: Those who love rice pudding and those who are wrong.
Apples and pork go together like Bogart and Bacall, or Ren and Stimpy, or pancakes and maple syrup — stay with me — so don't pass up the chance to wow your family or weekend company with a melt-in-your mouth cheesy and slightly sweet tenderloin.
I'm on a bit of a ginger bender — 'tis the season for colds, after all — and any recipe that calls for it makes it to the weekly menu. Many Lao dishes use ginger, so it's a flavour my family is already familiar with and likes.
Is there anything better than curling up with a steaming mug of NeoCitran when a cold hits and we can't breathe? No.
NeoCitran is great, but it's also medicated and not everyone can drink it safely. I live with someone who hallucinates if he so much as sips it and that's not pretty, folks. To top it off, when we're sick and our noses are chafed and it looks like squirrels stored their winter supply of nuts in our messy buns, do we really want to trek to the drug store? No.
Some people will ask you to take sides in the salty versus sweet snack battle. Those people are rigid and need to think outside the muffin tin. Are they living in a bunker? Because how else could they not know about salted chocolate?
When salted caramel chocolate everything became available at local grocers, women across the country danced a happy jig. Here now was the answer to all that ailed us seven to twenty-eight days of the month, or at least here was a way to tame the craving beast.
In October I travelled to the Dominican Republic with Proctor & Gamble Children's Safe Drinking Water program and, oh yes Jason Priestley. (Yes! THAT Jason Priestley for you 90210 fans.) We saw first-hand how desperate the need for clean drinking water is there (and elsewhere in the world) and to learn what P&G CSDW is doing to help.
Mothers the world-over live by a secret code: make it as difficult as possible to recreate favourite childhood recipes.
How many of us have called or texted or Skyped our way through making a dish because our moms’ recipes consisted of, “Just a couple of handfuls of this — WHOSE HANDFULS? Hagrid’s? — and three dashes of that?” It’s a cross-cultural tradition to cook this way, and likely also a secret rite of passage into home chef territory that nobody tells us about until we’ve slayed the dragons and retrieved the cup.
How To Create The Kitchen Of Your Dreams
