Check out these beauties! I am currently working on developing a mushroom story for Canadian Living Magazine and couldn’t resist taking a picture before I transformed these woodsy wonders into delectable dishes.

If you love mushrooms this is the time of year to find exciting varieties that are not usually available like the orange-y chanetrelles pictured here: (more…)

I had my niece and nephew staying with me on the weekend. I made these Mini Banana Bundt Cakes, covered them with orange-coloured peanut butter icing and let them go to town making Jack-o-Lantern faces on them. The stems are store-bought chocolate covered wafer cookies. (more…)

More fun in the test kitchen. Since we have been preserving all season it came time to test out the fruits of our labour. Andrew, the food editor for Homemakers Magazine, brought in link wieners from a Mennonite farm to test out our house made pickles and relishes.

For best results, the Test Kitchen staff agree that dogs must be boiled not grilled, buns must be soft and warm and toppings, well…. there was no consensus there. (more…)

More fun in the test kitchen. Since we have been preserving all season it came time to test out the fruits of our labour. Andrew, the food editor for Homemakers Magazine, brought in link wieners from a Mennonite farm to test out our house made pickles and relishes.

For best results, the Test Kitchen staff agree that dogs must be boiled not grilled, buns must be soft and warm and toppings, well…. there was no consensus there. (more…)

There are a few food meccas in the world where trends tend to emerge from, currently we are seeing Spanish chefs and Italian slow-food movement making a real impact on our culinary cultural map. While trends come and go - New York is still the place where cutting edge innovation takes place. This is where the rest of the world is interpreted and sold back to us repackaged for easy consumption – and why I make sure to be there a couple of times a year. I spotted two pervasive trends on a recent journey south of the border that you can watch for in your local venues.

Fat, Fat and more Fat:
It seems that food trends always appear like two faces of the same coin. Diet and health gurus (more…)

I recently returned from vacationing on the Adriatic coast of Italy. My first day back in Canada and I was struck with the realization that I would not be able to wake up with the exquisite lattes and espressos that greeted me every morning for the past three weeks.

Back at work that morning, speaking with my editor Donna, I regaled her with the earthly delights of the Italian culinary scene (more…)

Looking for an excursion on a Sunday afternoon? Act like a chef and check out your local farm communities. A revived interest in quality food and back-to-the-earth techniques has brought about a resurgence in niche farming and artisan producers of farm products.

We had a great experience visiting Katie and Phillip Wilman on their family goat farm, River’s Edge Goat Dairy (www.GoatMilkProducts.ca), where they have a small herd of goats (more…)

Getting family to enjoy cooking together is something all of the food editors here at Canadian Living are passionate about. So when one of our readers sent us photos from her family’s Thanksgiving weekend, I thought I would leave today’s blog to Erika Tipping to inspire you all…

October 2007 Family Thanksgiving at the cottage involved a lot of games and activities. One of our activities was to make the caramel apples featured in your magazine. (more…)

If you want to do this at home, I have two pieces of advice:
1. Don’t taste too many at once, although everyone in the test kitchen was looking forward to having a chocolate pig-out, we all now feel slightly ill. (more…)

I just conducted a chocolate tasting in the test kitchen for an upcoming piece that I am working on. I am jittering and shaking from the after-effects, can’t think why I thought that a coffee would help to counteract the chocolate overload!

The high point? A silky chocolate from Italy (more…)