Kensington Market: my neighbourhood, my family – my first real home.
Located in the heart of downtown Toronto bordered by College and Dundas to the north and south, to the east and west by Spadina and Bathurst, this unique enclave is a quirky, edgy, messy mish-mosh of old and new.
When asked by me some years ago why our nutty nuclear family always celebrated Christmas, my mother gave the usual explanation for her and my late dad’s often bizarre parenting decisions: “Well dear, we did it for you,” meaning me and my two younger brothers Eric and Jonny.
I should have heeded the above warning before I gathered ingredients and spent a couple of hours struggling – in the end, unsuccessfully – to duplicate the Apple Torte with Breadcrumb Hazelnut Crust pictured in all its supposed gorgeousity on the cover of October’s issue of Bon Appetit magazine.
NEW YORK: Call it my Higher Power, divine intervention, a charmed life …..
How else to explain this almost unbelievable story?
Yesterday, Andrew Coppolino, host of The Food Show that airs on Sundays from noon to 1 pm on Kitchener radio station 570 News, warned listeners that things were about to get wild, wacky and weird when he introduced me and Antony John.
(Listen or download here. Warning: there is about 20 seconds of dead air at the beginning of the recording.)
It’s been two months and I’m gradually settling into my new home located in my old neighbourhood: downtown Toronto’s best village-within-a-city, Kensington Market. (By the way, this downsized version of my former Kensington house looks, said a friend recently on staring speechless at my chandelier/mirror/and cherub-bedecked living room, “a lot like New Orleans.”)
Food sleuth is my name; sleuthing is my game.
In keeping with the above, I am reporting on some excellent finds – two in the Stratford region where I still spend weekends at my “country home”, the other in Toronto where I am on weekdays.
This summer, I finally made the move back to Toronto after giving Stratford, Ont., – the well-known rural home of Shakespeare, swine and swans – the five-year college try.
Clad in one of my several animal-print coats, I succumbed to the coffee-and-cruller craving en route from Quebec City to Montreal and stopped for that all-Canadian traveller’s fix at – where else? – Timmy Ho’s.
This one, in Trois-Rivieres, was really hopping on Easter weekend. I spilled my coffee on the tailgate of my boyfriend Ross’s red pick-up. Luckily, as he noted sagely afterwards, it is lined with indoor/outdoor carpet.
