I went for elevenses today; Pierre, author of the (award winning!) cookbook Kitchen Scraps, made crumpets. I know! For real! Crumpets! Only the very best butter transport system ever created!

Crumpets are made out of a wet, yeasty batter - thicker than pancake batter but thinner than bread dough - cooked in a hot skillet in crumpet rings (or cookie cutters, or cleaned-out tuna tins opened on both ends) until they're set enough to flip and cook until crusty gold on the other side. Why pancakes and waffles are so commonly made on Sunday mornings but crumpets aren't I have no idea. It's totally unfair. Maybe I'll go to the UK and ask them. Over crumpets.

The recipe isn't quite done yet. Pierre deemed the batter too sticky. They were quite fabulous, even … Read More

Honestly, I haven't been this excited about a new restaurant opening in a very long time.

CHARCUT Roast House, which has been in the works for in the neighbourhood of 3 years now, is finally open. Yes, it's a carnivore's Disneyland. But there's a lot on the menu for non-meat-eaters too. I already know what I'm going to have first: Romaine and Crispy Chicken Skin with Buttermilk Dressing. (I got a preview of the menu, which will be altered daily - love the hand-written note: because you can't have any salad without meat.)

There are wonderful people at the helm here - a lot of very big hearts. The menu will change daily as they play in the kitchen. You have the option of your own table, a seat at a long communal table (a thick slab of wood that came all the way … Read More

Last night was our Julie & Julia-themed dinner party, to celebrate the movie's release tomorrow (!) attended by some of my favourite Calgarian writer-eaters: Pierre, Gail, Gwendolyn and Cheryl and their significant others. It was a potluck - which are making a comeback, have you heard? I heartily recommend them - people love to bring food, and if not, they can always buy stuff. It takes the pressure off you, and minimizes dishes.

Everyone was instructed to bring something out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which is seeing a holiday resurgence in sales thanks to the movie. I made - what else? Boeuf Bourguignon. It needs a good long time to braise - slow cookers work fabulously for this - and in fact is better after a couple days in the fridge … Read More

Dinner tonight was fresh biscuits topped with deconstructed roasted tomato and garlic bruschetta.

See what I did there? Made dinner sound like something you'd pay a fortune for (or I would, anyway) if you ordered it off a restaurant menu? Really what "deconstructed" means is I ate what calorically counted as dinner standing up over the stove, mopping sticky, olive-oily tomato juices and teak-coloured cloves of garlic off the roasting pan with chunks of warm biscuit. It was so good I couldn't even make it to the table. When Mike and W came downstairs, they got leftover warmed soup and eggs on toast, respectively. I realize this sounds like far more of a summer meal than one you'd make while knocking on winter's door. (Hell, who are we … Read More

Question: is it really 2 for 1 pizza when one pizza is $9.75 and two are $18.95? I didn't think so.

So we passed on Inglewood Pizza for Spillery Pizza (yes, the website still says Paul's - it hasn't been updated yet), which was really very good, and chased it with a little bag of delicate, chewy, gluten-free amaretti made by my friend Pina. She and her mom have launched a delicious biscotti/amaretti company called Piccola Cucina, and I'm proud to say she's managed to get in with some coffee shops around town, and these little babies are served at Holt's trunk sales and private shopping nights. (If you need someone to take care of your holiday baking and package it all up for you, she's your girl. And a really sweet one at that.)

I couldn't look a mini chocolate bar in the eye this morning. By this afternoon I didn't even want one each time I walked past the bowl. What do you do when Halloween candy has lost its appeal? (Or when prices have been slashed by an irresistible 75%?) Chop them up (a post-Halloween massacre) and make cookies. Dress them up, if you will.

While we're on the subject - has anyone noticed the peanut butter cups aren't even full-sized anymore? Silver lining: they make great deep dish cookies. This peanut butter dough will turn out either - a chunky cookie packed with chopped Oh!Henrys, Snickers and Carmamilk bars, or a peanut butter cup inside a peanut butter cup. Of course, you could use any basic soft cookie dough - oatmeal, brown sugar (as for chocolate … Read More

I'll let you in on a little secret: if you're in Calgary, the Italian Supermarket on the corner of 20th Ave and Edmonton Trail NE has a woodburning pizza oven that they fire up on Saturday afternoons only. You can thank me later. With a pizza. We picked one up just before 2 - and just before they ran out of dough. Of course being an Italian Supermarket there are all kinds of real Italian toppings; we got as much as the dough would structurally tolerate: capicola, salami, prosciutto, artichokes, peppers, olives, mushrooms, fresh tomatoes and mozzarella. (Next time I'm going for the one topped with tomato bruschetta, fresh basil, mozzarella and bocconcini, but the boys wanted meat. This would be like the Italian Supermarket's version of a Meat … Read More

Bookmark this page. Seriously, do it now, before you forget.

I wasn’t sure what to call this. Technically it’s more cake than pie, but calling it cake doesn’t do justice to a pieplateload of juicy fruit topped with a sweet, crunchy topping; it’s not a pie either – it has no pastry but is baked in a pie plate and cut into wedges. The fruit-topping ratio is reminiscent of a crumble or a cobbler, but easier and not as doughy. I would go as far as to call it completely foolproof.

Generally I don’t make dessert on a regular weeknight, but I had bought red and yellow plums on the weekend with something specific in mind – cobbler? Pie? Upside down cake? It was something, but today I had no idea what it was, and flipping through the rained-on-and-dried-out … Read More

The raspberries are almost gone. And the Saskatoons, choke cherries, and rhubarb... even the leaves have up and left the tree out front - not entirely, but they abruptly started to bail out yesterday afternoon, as if on cue. Late this morning, the sun on my back felt like fall sun. I still can't place what made it different than the sun of a week ago.

I went to my sister's and I picked the last of the raspberries - just enough for a buttermilk cake. There's something about this particular formula of butter, sugar, flour, buttermilk and vanilla - a perfect crumb, buttery but with only a quarter cup of butter - it would make a great pillow for any number of juicy fruits - peaches or plums, or apricots, or cherries, or blackberries.. or how about pluots? The … Read More

There are Saskatoons at the dog park. (Sandy Beach, and the hill up to and down from Brittania.)

I noticed this when I was about two-thirds of the way through my latte. Stopping by a particularly fruitful bush, I chugged it so that I could fill my cup with Alberta's Own blueberries. As in Blueberries for Sal, I walked along the path, dropping berries into my little bucket: kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk. (Only it was more like tut, tut, tut - far more unceremonious in my Starbucks cup.)

I went home with the better part of a grande - enough to make muffins. Sundays, after all, are meant for making muffins. I had stumbled across a recipe for Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins and was instantly sold - I'm enamoured of browned butter anything - it's even fantastic … Read More