Surviving and Thriving in Toronto’s Kensington Market

February 23, 2021

(Left to right) Potsothy (Pots) Sallapa, Adam Zimmerman, Danny Zimmerman at
4 Life Natural Foods

Whither Kensington?

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…

20 years on, I’m Still a Fan of Charming Chef Jamie Oliver

May 25, 2020

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…

Chef Lynn Returns to Scottish Roots with Mince ‘n’ Tatties

October 15, 2017

This recipe is from the excellent cookbook ‘AT HOME with LYNN CRAWFORD’.

listen to the podcast

When I was interviewing well-known Canadian chef Lynn Crawford for a podcast, we chatted about our long friendship, her TV career, our joint project that raised $40,000 for a new kitchen at a Toronto homeless shelter for women called Sistering – and what we like to cook at home. Read more…

Linda McCartney Signed My Book “Go Veggie, Marion!”

August 22, 2017

This article by me appeared in the Toronto Star after I interviewed Linda McCartney in Toronto in October, 1991 about her vegetarian cookbook “Home Cooking”. Sadly, she died too young from breast cancer in 1998 at the age of 56.

In real life, Linda McCartney is nothing like the stilted photo that graces her cookbook.

And, say I, thank goodness for that. Read more…

I Serve up Two of the Best Fruit Desserts I’ve Ever Tried. Yer Welcome!

July 6, 2015

The recipe for this French Apple Tart comes from ‘America’s Test Kitchen’

Food magazine covers often catch my eye.

Such was the case recently when I was browsing the racks of a newstand at the Toronto airport on my way to to visit my elderly mum in London, UK. Read more…

Joanne Yolles and I Get to the Core of the Matter and Bake the Ultimate Tarte Tatin

September 11, 2013

This appeared in my column “Dish” in the Toronto Star in 2004.

I baked my first Tarte Tatin late last fall. Read more…

Two Fall Fruit Desserts: More Proof that Sweet-and-Simple Takes the Cake

October 18, 2012

Joanne Yolles’s Delectable Plum Tart Is A Winner!

Joanne Yolles has long been my colleague, friend and baking buddy. Read more…

Perfect Poached Pears

March 12, 2008

Being snowed in, as I was last Saturday, can be a good thing. On this occasion, cooking seemed like the ideal way to spend the day inside as I watched the blanket of snow reach several feet high outside my kitchen window.

First, I began testing TV chef Tyler Florence’s pizza dough for a column I was writing for the Toronto Star about my trip to Miami to attend the South Beach Wine & Food Festival and to escape the snow belt for the month of February.

I ended up with excellent results after three tries. Check this blog for the recipe which will appear soon along with details of that fab Florida feast on the beach. Read more…

Eco-Eatery is London Hot-Spot

March 1, 2008

Here’s my article from The Toronto Star, February 23, 2008, that I wrote about Acorn House after a recent visit to the U.K.

“Acorn House is the most important restaurant to open in London in 200 years,” Giles Coren, The Times magazine (December, 2006).

LONDON – I’m out of breath, having scrambled up a steep metal staircase behind fleet-footed, 6-foot-6 chef Arthur Potts Dawson to check out the composting system and rooftop garden of Acorn House located a stone’s throw from King’s Cross station. Read more…

Apples of My Eye

November 6, 2007

For me, fall means food fresh from the tree or field. In particular, it usually entails a visit the St. Lawrence Valley – the tiny village of Brinston an hour’s drive south of Ottawa, to be exact – to visit my nanny Evelyn Smail and to savour apple season at its peak.