John Catucci is my morning meditation.
During the pandemic, he gave me hope. He’s a comedian and he is funny – in a low-key way. He is endearing. The two TV shows he hosts — You Gotta Eat Here and Big Food Bucket List — are entertaining and educational. They are life-affirming. They are two of my favourite TV food shows. Read more…
This appeared in the Toronto Star in 1993 when “The Mafia Cookbook” was published by Simon & Schuster. Former U.S. mobster Joe “Dogs” Iannuzzi wrote the book and phoned me from parts unknown when he was under the Witness Protection Program after he was an FBI informant. He died in Texas in 2015. Read more…
Left to right: Me (Marion Kane), Jenny Barato, Sophia Loren at Trattoria Giancarlo.
This appeared in the Toronto Star as a feature article with the title “Cooking with Amore” on February 10th, 1999. Sophia Loren was in Toronto promoting her new cookbook “Recipes and Memories.” Trattoria Giancarlo closed in 2020 after 30 years – a landmark in downtown Toronto’s Little Italy. In that year, a brilliant film “The Life Ahead” was released starring Sophia Loren as a Holocaust survivor. Read more…
Centre: Mum and me. Left and right: Two British pastries we sleuthed together
Several years ago, my mother and I were in the hallway at her small flat on Steeles Rd. in NW London (UK) about to go out for a bit of food shopping. I was visiting her, as I did once or twice a year, from my home in Toronto, Canada.
She was wearing a plain navy blue coat with a hood. I was wearing leopard. Read more…
You don’t have to search for my favourite food finds. They are readily available. Please read on.
Food is a universal connector. Therefore, this blog post is about much more than food.
The global pandemic we’re living through is a mass trauma. I’ve been up and down for the past year. I sometimes have cabin fever and feel like a captive in my own home. I have floating anxiety, sometimes bordering on panic. But there’s an upside for me to these surreal and turbulent times. In a nutshell, I have slowed down. Read more…
(Left to right) Potsothy (Pots) Sallapa, Adam Zimmerman, Danny Zimmerman at
4 Life Natural Foods
These are podcasts recorded a few years ago about the changing nature of Kensington Market.
Everyone knows him as Pots. His full name is Potsothy Sallapa. This popular, kind, soft-spoken man has found his roots — literally and figuratively.
His dream is to build a rooftop greenhouse above his store 4 Life Natural Foods on Augusta Ave. in Toronto’s downtown Kensington Market. These are the literal roots. Read more…
From North America to the United Kingdom, these are my favourite food memoirs
A few days ago, I was craving a Walnut Whip. I bought three of them.
Why did I have a longing for an iconic British candy first made by Duncan’s of Edinburgh in 1910? Why did a milk chocolate cone with a whipped vanilla filling and a walnut on top urgently beckon to me? The answer: I was recently researching this blog post by re-reading the compelling memoir “Toast” by Nigel Slater and watching the brilliant BBC film by the same name. Read more…
The Stuffed Carrot Cake I baked was obviously a failure but it was extremely tasty as a pudding
First, a little first-person backstory.
I quit my job as food editor and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, after 18 years in 2007. It was arguably the best job for a food journalist in Canada. Four years later, I re-invented myself as a freelance Food Sleuth. Meanwhile, I did a couple of community cookbooks with residents of Toronto public housing and for an advocacy non-profit group called FoodShare. Read more…
This appeared as a longer feature article in the Toronto Star food section on January 26, 2000, after I discovered Jamie Oliver’s fledgling show “The Naked Chef” on TVO. I spoke to Jamie in the flesh a few months later when he was consulting at a London restaurant – the Toronto Star article appears below this one. Twenty years later, he’s had his ups and downs, and I am still a fan.
Jamie Oliver must have supernatural powers. He can make a person leap out of her comfy chair, run downstairs, fling open the freezer and act on an overpowering urge to roast a leg of lamb. I should know. It happened to me. Under slightly different circumstances, it also happened to Jody Read, acquisitions programmer for TVO. Read more…
