Professionals

Fletcher Wildlife Gardens

Pretty Pets

Being Civil

Back Again!

Get Well Soon

Last week, my mum hurt her hip...quite badly. She's been healing very, very slowly, and my heart breaks for her every day she's in pain. This contemporary shredded carrot salad -- one of my mum's all-time favorites -- goes out to her. I say contemporary because I find the 1970s version a little boring. I spiffed mine up with fresh mint from my windowsill garden, plus raisins (of course), raspberry balsamic vinegar, simple syrup, a half teaspoon of olive oil, and toasted crushed almonds.

Kiddish

Choco milschk made from Almond Breeze (my new favorite non-dairy beverage) and PC Organic Chocolate Syrup. Yes!

29 and Feeling Fine

Bowling with my baby. Size 7s and 11s.


Hintonburgettes. Sweet Sarah Sims (plus two babies!), the lovely me (plus, what Adam calls, 'The Teeth'), and the always-ebullient, Emilie.

Retro

My mother's cooking is so good that she's been making the same dishes for 30 years. One of my favorites is marinated cauliflower salad, a food that, for me, is total comfort.

The gorgeous weather this afternoon prompted me to make a lighter version of this salad suitable for a quick lunch. I used my hands to break my little Bryson Farms cauliflower into florets and then I sprinkled it with a sliced scallion, fresh lemon juice, olive oil, S&P, a bit of prepared horseradish, and a teaspoon of simple syrup. Perfecto!

Birthday Doppelganger

My mother has always been firm in her belief that Adam looks like Tom Hanks -- or rather that Tom resembles Adam. And while she's understandably biased when it comes to any of her kids, this time she's kinda right.

Well, today is Adam's birthday, and here's the email he sent me from work this morning.

On the way to work, I pick up a ratty 24 daily. Breezing through the sorry veneer of content, I reach the entertainment section in search of some comic relief. Diana Ross didn't show up to Jacko's memorial; good grief, how infuriating. The Beckhams rent an entire island for their wedding anniversary. Don't they know they are just peeing their money away; BUY, DON'T RENT. Moving on to more quantifiable data, in the celebrity birthdays today, I see that Tom Hanks is listed. Clearly, he is gradually encroaching on my life, and attempting to assume my identity. Do you think I should get a restraining order out? - Adam

My reply: How did you get to be so funny?

Adam: Learned from Tom Hanks.

Happy 29th and 53th birthdays, boys!

Hot Time

It's summer in the city.

In our house, that means fresh salads, tall drinks, daily bike rides, and lots of ice. Yesterday, I put together what was my first of those salads this season: rice noodles in a quick sesame miso dressing with sliced snap peas and green onion (the latter from Ziad's father's reputably amazing vegetable garden). I topped it off with a handful of purple microsprouts from the Bryson Farms delivery. Such a pretty dinner for a weekend bachelorette!

Then, this afternoon, we bought a 1/2 litre of Pascale's peanut butter and salty caramel ice cream at the Ottawa Farmers Market. I feel like such a plebeian for not trying her ice cream before now. I admit that my summer treat of choice is hot dogs or maybe chips and salsa, but Pascale's ice creams may make me a convert. Look for her many other flavors -- Espresso and Fifth Town Goat's Cheese; Hall's Apple Cider; Dark Chocolate Bacon -- all over town.

The winter is dead. Long live summer!

Common Fools

Snack Homage

In honor of my father's mad snack-making skills, I toasted three pieces of sprouted grain bread this afternoon, spread them with tahini, and sprinkled sliced strawberries and raw sugar on top.

When I was growing up, I picked buckets of strawberries with my mum at a local u-pick. Most of the berries were slated for jam (with a few set aside for shortcake -- with biscuits, not angel food cake, thank you very much). But my dad's favorite ways with them were sliced -- on both cereal and buttered toast. And he always made the bread a bit burny, just like I did today.

I miss stemming strawberries with my mum in the kitchen of our old yellow farmhouse.

El Burrito

I can't stop making burritos!

Maybe it was being in New Mexico (which, annoyingly for everyone else, I can't stop talking about) or maybe it was because Adam and I, planning a late-summer trip to NB, have been reminiscing about one of our old haunts, El Burrito Loco in Fredericton. For years, their large and colorful sign read "This ain't Tex Mex, baby! This is the real thing."

In any case, I recently discovered sprouted grain tortillas made by a company called Food for Life. I like them a lot, but Adam prefers the Canadian-made corn tortillas I usually buy. One thing is for sure: pile them this high and they'll never hold!

Les Hot Dogs

You may recall that when Adam went away last summer, I seized the opportunity to dine on canned ham, a processed meat product that had been a childhood favorite of mine.

This week, it was hot dogs -- or tube steaks, as my brother affectionately calls them. Only, this time, I at least sussed out an organic version: all-beef franks free of nitrites and made in nearby Quebec.

With some all-natural ketchup and a salad, this was a meal so effortlessly perfect that it left me wondering if I could eat it at work this fall. Or will the parfum of microwaved hot dogs be too juvenile and too repulsive for my good government colleagues to handle?

Evening Come

Jack and Lorraine taught me well. A day of dining out made us hungry for familiar foods, so we went to the local Whole Foods and grocery shopped, eating out of our bags for dinner.

Afterward, we had a long swim and shared a lounger while the sun went down. The hotel courtyard, just beyond the adobe fence surrounding the pool is a coiffed green lawn split down the middle with a scrolling wrought-iron trellis (home to flowering vines and a flock of tiny songbirds). All around are nooks for upholstered outdoor furniture, mosaic-topped drink tables, and wooden rocking chairs, the kind you could grow old in. We sat outside, eating pina colada ice pops, until the torch lights came on. And now it''s time for bed.

Santa Fe

As the capital of New Mexico, Santa Fe is like Albuquerque's richer, thinner, better-looking cousin. The art is more expensive and so the artists seem better fed. The iced coffees are taller, the old town is packed with tourists, and the architecture is more polished. As soon as we drove into town this morning, Adam and I accidentally drove through Canyon Road, a hilly strip of nearly 80 art galleries and studios peppered with New Mexican bistros, vintage Range Rovers, sleepy Dalmatian dogs, and graying high-society drop-outs.

We stopped for cold drinks and smoked pecans at The Tea House before picking out three galleries that suited our tastes more closely than the Moma had last week. New Mexico's warm weather and lack of moisture makes for an environs friendly to outdoor sculpture, and we saw a handful of wind-powered ones made out of metal and old paint cans, dollar bills, and kitchen pots at the Jennie Cooley Gallery. And just a couple doors down were some of the most amazing contemporary paintings and sculptures I have ever seen by a fellow called simply 'Pasqual' at GF Contemporary Gallery, which was staffed by a society of international hipsters who spoke to each other in French and were clothed entirely in grey silk and designer jeans.

Santa Fe also has a proper downtown, which is partly where Bill Richardson (NM's scandal-plagued, but Democratic(!) governor) punches in every daya, and partly a dedicated walking plaza (filled with shopping suitable for hardcore American loyalists). We ate lunch at Cafe Pasqual's, a decades-old SF institution, serving New Mexican, Mexican, and Asian breakfast, dinner, and lunch. Adam's grilled chicken sandwich on chili cornbread was delicious, but played second fiddle to my shredded chicken enchiladas made with white corn tortillas and covered in dark chocolate chili mole.

Stuffed to the gills, we shopped around for a bit, took a break by the river, and then missed Albuquerque so much that we decided to head back home.