Food

Cutting board with chopped carrots and potatoes for soup

Why I stopped cooking Russian soups – on habits and muscle memory

(A version of this appeared in the February issue of my newsletter, the Soviet Samovar.) Winter came late this year — it only properly snowed in early January and I finally felt like I could breathe again. Winter has always been my favourite season, and now I rely on that blanket of snow to, quite literally, blanket my climate anxiety for a few months every year. […]

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Soviet-Russian seder traditions - Syrian Roasted Lamb Shanks recipe

Stumbling into Syrian cuisine while searching for a Soviet-Russian seder tradition

It starts, as these things so often do, with food. My (non-Jewish) partner and I, recently reunited after a short separation, in the sad bachelor apartment where he had temporarily landed. Where familiar lonely kitchen things still glared at me woefully, bereft of their mates that had landed up in my kitchen. Where we bumped into each other, all corners and angles and elbows still

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home canning, compote, vegetables-4653058.jpg

Russian Kompot: I’m probably doing it wrong (with recipe)

I finally made the kompot. What’s kompot? Russian kompot is essentially a homemade fruit juice. It’s been around for centuries and is popular in Russia and the former East Bloc. I only recently learned that what I always thought was kompot was actually compote, which is also made with cooked fruit, but has less liquid and is eaten, rather than drunk. Compote is French, and

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Map of Tim Hortons in Toronto

Still keeping your coffee in the freezer? Tut, tut

Breaking news, people. That coffee you’ve been storing in your freezer is really what’s wrong with society today. According to Coffee Common, a coalition of coffee roasters and farmers, based out of the US: Once more consumers understand that coffee shouldn’t be stored in their freezer like a bag of corn; it opens up the conversation to everything else. This understanding will create curiosity about

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Woman holding bag of mini donuts, with a Twitter outage message over top

Twitter highlights the banal in food

Are you a food writer? Do you tweet? Josh Ozersky, Time food writer, has something to say to you. You’re boring. Your tweets suck. Food writers on Twitter suck. There. Phew, done. Said. Finally. It’s refreshing to hear a food writer say this aloud. Ozersky has essentially highlighted all the absurdity of a culture saturated in food media. Under the microscopic glare of a Twitter

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No Frills flyers, illustrating multiculturalism at No Frills grocery stores in Canada

No frills, but plenty of multiculturalism

While I was ranting about $8 chocolate bars yesterday, I got to thinking about No Frills, where we get a lot of our groceries. What Canadian doesn’t like to rave about our open-minded multiculturalism, and especially the eating part? It’s easier than trying to dissect international politics, or talk critically about the ways in which multiculturalism has failed us, or marvel at the many times

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Stack of dark chocolate bars

Sometimes, a chocolate bar is just a chocolate bar

(Warning: The following rant has not been brought to you by sustainable, artisan chocolate or fair-trade coffee. In fact, it’s been sitting around on ye old to-do list for coming on three weeks now. I guess we can call it a well-aged rant.) In short, can we please, please stop trying to find meaning in every bite of local, organic, feel-good morsel we eat? It

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Food police and cookies

Food police: Whither the voice of reason?

Sheryl Kirby, the blogger behind Save Your Fork… There’s Pie and Taste T.O., posted on this great article in the Vancouver Sun on the backlash to the food police, “Consumers Fed Up With Food Politics.” That special place in my heart where my inner Albertan resides, silently seething against well-meaning Ontario and its progressive socially-minded politics, well, let’s just say there was a little rejoicing

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