I haven't been to a naked potluck. But I have been launched naked, by a pizza paddle, into a vat of bubbling mud. We all have our crazy naked stories. Some even involve food. Or kitchen tools. Oh dear, this is getting out of control. Let me explain. In the latest episode...
I'm dying to see the movie Wonder Woman. Have you seen it yet? My sisters and I watched Wonder Woman, the tv show, as kids - the crown, the invisible jet, that lasso of truth! She was, she is, just so WONDERFUL. But guess what? I've just...
Last month we said goodbye to my husband's aunt Jans. At the funeral her daughter Anneke spoke about a woman devoted to her family. An athlete - basketball, badminton, tennis, skiing. A long career with Unicef. A lover of summers at the lake. A woman who...
Typically weeds and scratchy things aren't that appealing. But last weekend at the market the Four Seasons Farm stand was selling bags of young nettles,'two for one'. I have never cooked nettles, or stinging nettles for that matter. Chances are they were the latter; five out of...
Ice Breakers Are Essential. Especially when you're in Ireland at a food and literary festival. You're there to harvest stories for your podcast, you're jet-lagged, there are hundreds of people milling around, but you don't know a soul. My old trick was to wear a jumpsuit. Everyone loves them....
Pink is having a moment. Not bubblegum pink, or hot pink spandex. I'm talking about a soft pink, the pink of an apple blossom, or a pale pink linen sofa, or slivers of pickled red onion. This tone has no boundaries. It pops up in food,...
Entropy. Its scientific definition is long and complicated. Something about a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system. Or, in domestic terms, entropy is the tendency for systems...
"I experience tremendous relief in talking about the tough stuff with other people. At the simplest level it makes me feel less alone.” -Molly Wizenberg, Episode 17 of The Food Podcast I've written about Molly before - she's a writer, creator of the James Beard award winning blog...
This is Molly Wizenberg's kitchen table in Seattle, a third hand mid-century modern gem, situated in the centre of her home. She posted this image on Instagram a while ago, when she was 'attempting to block out that gold folder bursting with 2016 tax documents by...
What do you really know about Neanderthals? That they are dimwits? That they relentlessly tried to make fires and drank from fire extinguishers in the movie Night at the Museum? That they were killed off and have nothing to do with modern human lineage? Or do Clan of...
I wanted to sit down and gush about devilled eggs today. Their deliciousness. Their beauty. Their 'not just at Easter' appeal. How devilled eggs are secretly easy to make. But then I went through the weekend papers, the ones I missed while away over the...
I've always had girl crushes. They began in grade 4 with Patricia Zentilli, a grade 6 golden-haired actress. I has just been given the role of a maid in our school's production of The Wizard of Oz. I shook a feather duster and swung a broom. But Patricia,...
I spent most of my childhood sneaking around. My sneaking memories begin with cookie dough. We were living in Jackson, Mississippi at the time. I was four. I remember our '70's kitchen - lots of brown, a garburator and a lazy susan in the corner that...
When I sit down to write, sometimes I begin with just a seed of an idea and nothing more. This used to feel scary. Now I embrace it. I call it white space - a clear, uncluttered headspace, ready to go on a 'choose your own...
Snow is still on the ground here in Nova Scotia, but spring is revealing itself in lovely, subtle ways. On the way home from Wentworth we drove through a thick swath of smoke, streaming westward across the highway. Wild blueberry farmers follow a two-year crop management cycle,...