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 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…
This appeared in the Toronto Star’s Living section on Saturday, March 22, 2008.
MIAMI – Jamie Oliver, wearing a fitted short-sleeved shirt and jeans, emerges from behind the scenes and is greeted with a barrage of screams, whistles and applause.
His face is flushed. Hot in every sense of the word, this adorable British chef with the Mockney accent and penchant for “easy-peasy” cuisine wipes his brow with a tea towel. Read more…
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…
