LONDON UK – It was about six years ago and my mother and I were about to leave her flat on Steeles Rd. in Primrose Hill. We were standing in the small hallway when she put on her new navy blue gabardine coat with a hood. Read more…
Save Kensington Market: The Battle is on for my Neighbourhood’s Heart and Soul
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.
It’s where skinny Victorian row houses stand side-by-side with assorted shops and eateries selling everything from soup and suits to nuts and neckties – with plenty of stuff in between. Read more…
The Sleuthing Begins in my Brand New Digs at the Centre for Social Innovation
It took me a while to figure out an answer to the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” (By the way, I’m not sure if I have grown up in spite of being what is politely called “middle-aged.” When people claim I don’t look – or act – my age, I have this answer: “Hair dye and immaturity keep me young.”) Read more…
Eggless Latkes a Hit at Chanukah Feast
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.
The reason I call this bizarre is that both my parents are Jewish. My mother Ruth Schachter is a holocaust refugee whose oil tycoon father Aaron Nisse led the family’s escape from Riga, Latvia, when she was 16 years old in the fall of 1939. A year later, she, her sister Dita and my grandparents finally settled in Montreal after taking the trans-Siberian railway through Russia, crossing the Pacific on a Japanese liner, being sprung from jail in Seattle for not having the right papers and then living in New York for six months. Quite a story and more of it when I eventually write my memoir. Read more…
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
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.
This dessert is featured in an article called “Lidia’s Friuli”: a piece about Lidia Bastianich, the New York chef and restaurateur beloved and respected by so many, including me. Its credits attribute the text to Nina Elder – and a well-written text it is – and recipes to Bastianich herself. Read more…
Miracle on Allen Street
NEW YORK: Call it my Higher Power, divine intervention, a charmed life …..
How else to explain this almost unbelievable story?
It was Day Three of my recent four-day visit here. (Two more days were spent travelling from and back to Toronto by VIA/Amtrak train – a quick word of advice, don’t try it and, if you do, take enough to eat for the 12-hour trip as the “food” from the cafe car, including coffee, is basically inedible.) While here, I also attended parts of the Food Network Wine & Food Festival: a new offshoot of the Miami event that’s been going for several years and is a similarly hectic, celeb-studded whirlwind of demos, parties and tastings. More on that later. Read more…
Ant, Andrew and I Make Waves on Radio Food Show
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.)
The latter is a buddy of mine and one of the reasons I moved to Stratford five years ago (others are his lovely wife Tina and the fact that my neighbours in Kensington Market were terrorizing me for reasons too dark to mention). I recently returned to live in Toronto because: Stratford has too many ducks, not enough people of colour etc. etc. (see previous blogs). But I digress. Read more…
Noshing in My Old Nabe
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.”)
After almost 30 years of living in the heart of Kensington, I misguidedly left in 2005 in search of what I then hoped would be a more peaceful, serene, semi-rural life in Stratford, Ont. Erratic VIA rail service, lack of diversity, the 401, isolation, snow and other bad things I couldn’t change have brought me back to the Big Smoke – more specifically to the feisty, colourful, never-dull Market, this edgy hub of ethnic food, motley crew of eccentric people and, most recently, home of three fantastic food finds.
See an earlier blog for my raves about the new butcher Sanagan’s in the former location of Max Meats on Baldwin St. His chicken and filet mignon (not usually my favourite cut of beef but superlative here) are my new addictions. Read more…
Nibbles and Bites
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.
Simple Fish and Chips, 118 Downie St., just steps from City Hall in downtown Stratford is that rarity: a really good fish and chip shop. Ross and I had heard about the new eatery owned and operated by a fellow from nearby St. Mary’s (he recently closed the fish and chippery there and spends part of his time selling sausages from a barrow) but had not tried its wares until the other night. Read more…
Moveable Feasts – and Nature is Not for Me
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.
To say that small-town life didn’t agree with me is probably putting it mildly. To say that living in this seemingly bucolic but actually often bleak and occasionally sinister spot led to a slippery slope from which I am gradually climbing back to health and happiness is only partially true. What I do now know is that too much change at once, living alone for the first time in my life and misguidedly choosing an isolated, alienating environment located in Ontario’s snow belt as my new locale was a geographical cure that, as is usually the case, didn’t work.
Coincidentally, I have met several people who have made midlife decisions to leave their urban home for what seem like greener pastures in the countryside, only to return. No one is wrong or right here but, to quote my brother Eric, who recently moved to West Harlem and claims these words are from Andy Warhol: “The best thing about a small town is that, when you leave, there is nothing to miss.” Read more…
