We all have nights like this: you're exhausted from a long day, the kids have activities to get to, and everyone's starving and rangy. You need to get dinner on the table quickly, before everyone — including you — has a meltdown. Your instinct is to just throw up your hands, pick up the phone, and dial the nearest pizza place.
Put down the phone! I have a better solution. This tasty pasta dish can be on your table in thirty minutes or less — quicker than a pizza delivery, and much healthier.
Food bloggers, I know how it is—you have a delicious recipe that you want to share with the world. It is an incredible dish that you crave often and you think that the world will be better knowing it. You post it with high expectations about the accolades you will receive for unleashing such deliciousness on the world. You wait...and wait...and wait. It turns out your post has fallen flat.
Here we are, mid-summer, and I feel like I've reached the "kitchen fatigue" point. It seems as soon as I clean up the kitchen from one meal, the children are raiding the refrigerator or rummaging through the cupboards looking for snacks. Chalk it up to extra activities and growth spurts, I suppose.
When I used to have a downtown office job, at least once a week I would eat out at the Vietnamese restaurant that was down the street from my building. One of my favourite things to order was the salad rolls, complete with savoury nutty dipping sauce.
If you're looking for the perfect summer drink, you need look no further. The Cosmopolitan is refreshing, tasty, and the perfect cocktail to sip on those warm summer evenings.
When I was sixteen, I went on a school trip to Europe. The highlight of that trip was our time in Greece. I remember being amazed by the beauty of the white buildings against the backdrop of the impossibly blue sea, by the sandy beaches and the ancient ruins. I also remember my introduction to the cuisine, and how spectacular and tasty the food was. I had never tasted anything like it before: creamy tzatiki drizzled on warm pita bread, alongside the freshest of vegetables. It was the start of a love affair with Greek cuisine that is still torridly alive to this day.
A few years ago, my husband and I took the kids to Disneyland; prior to that, my last visit to the Magic Kingdom was in 1987. Much had changed since then—the addition of the California Adventure park, the Indiana Jones ride, the plethora of Cars characters hanging out for photo opportunities.
I love cooking. I really do. But when it's summertime, I find myself much less inclined to spend time in the kitchen—summer is so short and fleeting in my part of the world, I feel like I must carpe diem the hell out of it and spend every possible minute outside.
It's hard for a foodie to be inside when these beauties are in bloom!
I remember the day I had my first Starbucks Frappuccino. It was 1997. I was on a platonic coffee date with a man on whom I had an unrequited crush. He bought me a Mocha Frappuccino and it was love at first sip: frothy, sweet, and delicious. I stayed up late that night not only because of the evening caffeine consumption, but also because of the memory of that man's green eyes and square jaw.
Here's a confession: I am terrified of the barbeque. I'm terrified that I am going to set myself on fire or blow up the house, and so I tend to eye that grill from a safe distance, usually with a glass of wine in my hand, while my husband does the dirty work.
My grandma once said that, in case of an emergency, she could take over for my mom and prepare all of our favourite meals, simply based on the state of my mom's cookbooks. She could flip through those cookbooks and stop at the pages that were crumpled, stained, or stuck together. In my mom's copy of Betty Crocker's Desserts Cookbook from the late '60s, the page devoted to Cream Puffs is nearly illegible.
Maybe it's part of my master plan to get really shiny hair, or maybe it's just because avocados are deliciously full of nutrients; either way, I cannot seem to get enough of that creamy green superfood these days. This avocado pasta salad has just the right amount of zing from the lemon and rich flavour from the tomatoes, not to mention the wonderful creaminess from the avocado! Oh, avocados, how I love you.
Summertime is right around the corner, and I don't know about you, but in my house that means that a plethora of frozen treats is required to keep the troops happy. Well, not just the troops—frozen treats make me happy, too! There is just something so lovely about cooling off on a warm summer's day with a delicious sweet treat.
My children are very close in age and when they were small, life could be best described as noisy, chaotic, and messy. My days were spent in near-constant motion, days of meeting never-ending needs and tidying up never-ending messes — until naptime. That brief window of silence in my days was my chance to take a break, a few moments just for me. I could sit undisturbed and sip a cup of chai or peppermint tea, and eat a snack that I would have to share with no one.
Telling someone that you are a vegetarian guarantees that you will be asked the following questions: a) Do you eat fish? and b) How do you get enough protein? If you're like me, you field the second question with a ribald joke of an answer that will make everyone around you blush awkwardly and be forever unable to look your husband in the eye.
There are just so many reasons to love avocado; besides their creamy texture and delectable taste, they are nutrient-packed superstars. Avocados are rich in Omega-3s, amino acids, carotenoids, and antioxidants. They have anti-inflammatory properties, and their fatty acids work to give you beautiful skin and shiny hair. If I could sew, I would make little superhero capes for all the avocados in the world to celebrate their superfood status.
