The Inviting Life

Howdy all!  I hope you are having a happy hump day.  Later this month, I will be publishing a post highlighting my preferred cookbook authors and recipe sources. In the interim, I'd like to give a shout out to Bonnie Stern, who is my favourite Canadian kitchen wizard.   Bonnie has, over the years, introduced me to a host of new taste experiences. Stern extoled the marvels of Middle Eastern cuisine (she is Jewish) before Yotam Otto Lenghi came along. This is certainly not a diss at Ottolenghi, who is brilliant, and, as fate would have it he and Stern are friends.   Two of Bonnie's Cookbooks, Essentials of Home Cooking and Friday Night Dinners are staples in my household.  I have procured cookbooks over the years that are more aspirational than realistic, but Stern's recipes remain steadfastly in my dinner repertoire.  If you happen to live in Victoria, you could try borrowing Stern's titles from the public library to see if you like them. I recomme...

  Hello all. How are you? I hope you were able to find things to nourish you this week, whether figuratively or literally.  In my 20s, I was living in Edmonton. The University of Alberta Student Union Building was home to an unassuming eatery that offered homey Asian fare at wallet-friendly prices. Within that unassuming space, I devoured bronzed skewers of sticky-sweet chicken teriyaki and, therein, I had my first taste of BiBimBap.  B ibimbap  (pronounced "bee-BIM-bop"), is a mixed bowl incorporating steamed white rice with assorted vegetables in a savoury sauce. It is usually served with an egg, sunny side up. The textures in the bowl are luscious, soft and alternately crispy and crunchy and the flavour profile is smoky, slightly sweet and slightly spicy.  The (optional) addition of kimchi adds a pleasing note of acidity.  In a fit of culinary nostalgia, I attempted to replicate BiBimBap in my own kitchen, to the best of my ability. The first recipe I tr...

  Hello, people of the bloggy sphere. How are you? I hope the week ahead is edifying for you.  Here is my weekly list of things that made me happy. There are as many crime series as there are crimes committed. Within the mystery genre is a sub-category, "cozy murders".  Apparently,  violently snuffing out a human life is synonymous with nestling in front of a fireplace in your favourite knitwear, fat novel in hand, a plate of delicate canapes by your side. It would be disingenuous for me to be indignant about this  however as, murder mysteries, rife with Machiavellian machinations and labyrinthian plot twists,  induce in me a panoply of emotions, most of them not entirely unpleasant.   Vera (Britbox) is, perhaps, my favourite exemplar of the cozy mystery. Each episode unfolds along windswept stretches of rugged coastline. The skies above are a perennial shade of grey. Murder is, after all, a shady business, unsuitable for turquoise skies.  ...

  Hello there. Hope you are having a good start to your weekend. Here is my happy list this week. NPR's music editor, Bob Boilen, described the phenomenon of Julien Baker thus: " the purity of her voice and the yearning way she sings make each of her songs lovely and memorable rather than merely somber." I cannot think of a more apt way to describe Baker's resonant power as a songwriter/performer. The only thing diminutive about Baker is her stature. Good things really do come in small packages. Baker has put out several albums, and she has performed more than one Tiny Desk Concert, Of late, I am primarily listening to Sprained Ankle and, therefore, I elected to share the earlier, mini-concert from 2016 with you. Also I thought I'd share this performance of what is perhaps my favourite song in Baker's entire  repertoire. If you read my previous post, you probably figured out that I am a history nerd. In keeping with my exhortations in favor of Hilary Mante...

 Hello everyone.  How are you?  Are you getting along okay? I hope so. When I was contemplating which recipes I should share in this medium, holy grail dishes sprang to mind. By, "holy grail" I am referring to the handful of recipes in my repertoire which yield outstanding results on a consistent basis.  Recipes that my friends and family clamor for.  At the top of the list is peanut noodles, a dish Steve has asked me to make more than any other.   As you may have observed if you read any of my previous posts, I am on a bit of a bowl food kick. This one has the advantage of not only being served in one vessel, it is prepared all in one pan (minus the peanut sauce, which you can make head), thereby minimizing washing up I have never met a peanut sauce I did not like.  However, some are definitely better than others.  Some peanut sauces are bland and claggy, others overly sweet and lacking in acidity. I try to refrain from hyperbole but I can c...

 Hello there. How are you?  I hope you are getting along ok. I confess, I plot ways of getting S. to eat more vegetables (breakfast cereal being his favourite food group) as he is my favourite human and I'd like to keep him around for as long as possible. The way to manage this feat, has been via recipes the cool kids refer to as "bowl food".  Bowl recipes connote more than the vessel they are served in. A bowl constitutes a complete meal in one, that is a grain or starch, a protein, and one or more servings of vegetables served all in one, though not necessarily jumbled together.  My favourite renditions of these dishes are topped with sort of tasty sauce which,  like the rug in the Big Lebowski, "tie it all together". Recently, I did some mild rejigging of a bowl recipe from one of my favourite culinary sources, America's Test Kitchen. The results were met with resounding enthusiasm. I thought it prudent to share as I have never understood people who hoard...