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…
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…
“The table could sometimes breed violence and it could be the backdrop to the proscribed and the forbidden and the perverse … But feeding people made them happy; it made me happy, and grounded me.” From “Treyf” by Elissa Altman
From left to right in the photo above, here are my favourite food memoirs. All of them are beautifully written (in varying degrees) and all evoke the way food played a part in the author’s life. Some contain a bonus: recipes. Read more…
Julia Child’s great-nephew Alex Prud’homme with his new book
Julia Child often said: “I was born hungry!” She had an appetite for life and sharing a love of good food was her consuming passion. She was North America’s first TV celebrity chef and her great-nephew Alex Prud’homme had a front-row seat. Read more…
“Immaturity and hair dye keep me young.”
I’m repeating the title of this post for a few reasons: First, everything clever is worth repeating. It usually gets a good laugh – one of life’s giddiest pleasures, especially at my age. It’s true and unabashedly honest. It sums up what’s to follow – the announcement that I turn 70 in a few days. And last, it’s original.
I used to think I stole this funny line from my beloved heroine: the American journalist, author, screenwriter and director Nora Ephron. I steal a lot from that eminently quotable woman who died too young at 71 in 2012 from a rare form of leukemia. It’s hard not to steal from her because we seem to have parallel lives. I talk about her in the present because she lives on in my heart.
We both love food and cooking. We consider crushed pineapple mandatory in carrot cake, we like meatloaf – done right – and both have a recipe for cottage cheese pancakes. We both adore Julia Child and all that she’s about. Read more…
1999: Julia Child making her famous scrambled eggs at home in Cambridge, Mass.
(An excerpt from my book Dish, a collection of my favourite columns and recipes from the Toronto Star)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – I came bearing buns: rye sourdough buns I managed to procure in a mad dash moments earlier, after the croissants carefully ordered for this momentous occasion failed to arrive at my hotel at the appointed time.
Still recovering from that culinary escapade, I was both jittery and elated at the prospect of breakfast chez Julia Child as we drove along her quiet, leafy street a few blocks from bustling Harvard Square one beautiful, sunny morning last week. Read more…
“I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.” — Julia Child Read more…
In Memoriam: Judith Jones died on August, 2017, in Vermont at the age of 87
I arrived at the door of Judith Jones’s compact, six-room apartment in a classic brownstone on New York’s Upper East Side to the sounds of enthusiastic, high-pitched barking on the other side of the door.
It was her little white and furry Havanese dog Mabon who was happy to see me and proceeded to jump up and down as I entered the cozy place where she’s lived for several decades. Read more…
It all began about a year ago when I gave two people I had no reason to distrust full access to my large, fully-furnished house while I was away.
All went well for several months during which time I would visit the place occasionally to pick up mail and move items to my new place – mostly clothes, work-related stuff and some important papers.
The pride and joy of my former abode was its cookbook library: a room I had specifically designed to hold the 1,200 or so cookbooks I had accumulated during my almost 40 years as a member of Canada’s food media. Many of those – 18, to be exact – were spent as food editor/columnist for this country’s largest newspaper the Toronto Star where I received review copies of cookbooks on a regular basis. Read more…
For 18 years, as food editor and food columnist for the Toronto Star, I shared my passion for things culinary. Most important and gratifying was the joyous connection it gave me to people who enjoy and prepare food – from the Filipino taxi driver who enthusiastically described how his mother makes Chicken Adobo to the firefighters with whom I cooked and then ate a luscious, convivial meal of grilled chicken and rhubarb crumble at their downtown Toronto firehall one lovely evening. In addition to writing about the latest balsamic vinegar and the best way to deep-fry calamari, I used my platform with Canada’s largest newspaper to discuss social, cultural and even political issues associated with food. This includes the disturbing issue of those who go hungry in a land where there should be plenty to go around. When I resigned from my job in 2007 having written Julia Child’s obituary, after interviewing Joe “Dogs” Iannuzzi about his role as cook for New York mobsters while he was under the witness protection plan and feeling that I had new fish to fry, I turned my hand to radio, blogging and working with non-profit groups – always with the focus on food. And thus was born Kitchen Sisters: a fundraiser feast at which some of Toronto’s top women chefs will join forces at Mildred’s Temple Kitchen on March 8, 2011, the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, to raise money for much-needed expansion and renovation of the kitchen at Sistering, a drop-in for homeless women. Read more…
